Compatibilism is the philosophical position that people have free will even if determinism is in fact true. Determinism is the premise that all present and future actions are completely entailed by the past along with the laws of nature. So determinism holds that what you are thinking about right now is a direct and inescapable result of the state of the universe before the Earth was formed. All of your actions are completely predetermined and you have no ability to alter the future that the laws of nature prescribe. Indeed, you are just part of the inexorable playing out of reality that was set in motion billions of years ago (by some magic that determinists don’t talk about). So the dichotomy is: how can you reconcile this deterministic viewpoint with a belief that an individual has agency and the ability to make free will choices?
I analogize compatibilism to building a bridge starting on the opposite banks of a river. It is easy to get started on either side, but the real trick is to get them to meet in the middle. So on one bank of the river you have this deterministic view where classical physics is obviously deterministic and on the opposite shore you have free willed actions of the individual. The trick is to connect the two while not contradicting either one. Let’s begin with the idea of free will. Free will is the default position that most everyone operates under. Free will means that in many situations we have a limited freedom to choose between different options. We can decide when to turn right or go straight, when to go to work and when to stay home, and the whole panoply of choices we make every day. We often reflect on the important choices we make and evaluate how good of a choice we made. Not that we can go back and change things, but we can learn and make better choices in the future.
Compatibilists think that as long as we make our choices for our own reasons, we are using free will. This use of free will then does not conflict with the idea that our future is decided by the causally sufficient conditions of our past. The hard determinists would argue that you really never made a choice, that the path you thought you chose for your own reasons was really the only path available due to the causal conditions at the time. That what you perceived as a choice was an illusion, that you could not have made any other choice but the one you did in fact make. By Occam’s razor we should think that what most people report as making free will choices is simpler than that it is an illusion, that choices were not real choices. Thus, it is up to those determinists that maintain that free will is incompatible with determinism to show how this is the case. It is up to these hard determinist type incompatibilists to demonstrate how what we think of as free will is not the reality of the situation. However, the compatibilist’s work is not yet done. There is still a wide gap between the determinism of classical physics and the compatibilist’s notion of free will. In fact, the free will that the compatibilist would claim up to this point is no different than the Libertarian notion of free will. Both the compatibilist and the libertarian believe that we do have free will. That the free will can be constrained by many influences, but we do have real choices that we can make due to our agency and free will.
The libertarian position of free will includes fundamental indeterminism in living systems that organisms can sometimes exploit and other times must actively resist. This indeterminism causes many processes to yield probability rather than certainty. We see this in the sex and genetic makeup of our offspring for example. We also see indeterminism in many mental functions like recalling memories or prioritizing our desires. This libertarian outlook requires that we use trial and error learning which leads to making free willed choices that have some probabilities associated with it. The agency of libertarians comes from what we have learned from the choices we have made in the past. The compatibilist view of free will is that our free will choices may have been determined but that we are oblivious to this predetermination and therefore, we act freely in spite of the fact that we would really only ever have done what we ended up doing. So the situation is that we have all of these factors influencing our choices: genetics, environment, development and other circumstances. The libertarian believes that, in spite of all of these influences, what we have learned can still be a factor in making choices. Whereas, the compatibilist believes that all of these factors determine what choice we make, but because we are not fully cognizant of all of these influences, we freely make the choice that all of these forces add up to. Operationally, both of these give the same results. Both the compatibilist and libertarian act the same, raise their children the same and most likely have the same views of moral responsibility. You can’t really distinguish these two views based on beliefs about free will, although some may think otherwise. The real question has to be, is the living world deterministic or indeterministic. I would say that both sides of this debate have been poorly argued. The libertarian looks at the randomness of mutations and evolution, as well as the probabilities involved in sexual reproduction, and concludes that there is sufficient indeterminism to conclude that determinism in living systems is not valid. The compatibilist responds that the apparent randomness and probabilities arise from our lack of knowledge and not randomness or probability. The determinist looks at our nervous system and cites the “all or none” signal propagation and correlates of consciousness as supporting a deterministic view, while indeterminists look at the molecular basis of neuronal action and neuroplasticity to support their argument.
So we seem to be stuck on building a bridge from determinism to free will with a disagreement as to the nature of living systems being deterministic or indeterministic. Perhaps we should start on the opposite bank where we definitely have determinism in classical physics. Let’s start on the deterministic side and see how far we get. It is hard to argue against determinism in classical physics. This is where philosophers look at colliding billiard balls and falling dominos to come up with the idea that everything is reliably caused such that you can predict the outcome of any event if you have sufficient knowledge of the system and the laws of physics. The hallmark of the deterministic nature of physics is the simple algebraic equations it makes use of in describing the outcome of events. The motions of all Heavenly bodies are explained using some very simple ballistic equations. This leads to a clockwork universe.
From this starting point we must move in the direction of people and sentient animals, because free will, if it exists, would be an advanced biological trait. To get from classical physics to biology requires us first to consider chemistry. In much of chemistry determinism seems to hold up very well. The grouping of individual atoms into substances is explicable by the underlying physics of the atoms. There is chemical potential energy that determines the equilibrium of a chemical system, and many reactions are reversible. However, we do see some indeterminism coming through in the areas of kinetics and thermodynamics. Heat causes molecules in a gas or liquid to exhibit random motion. This random motion gives the impetus for most of the chemical reactions we know about. A whole theory, the Kinetic Molecular Theory, explains how the random motion of molecules cause temperature, pressure and diffusion. These are all caused by the random motion of molecules; however, in most cases the large numbers of molecules involved causes these individual motions and collisions to average out to a definite temperature, pressure and rate of diffusion. So these will not be an impediment to determinism unless the scale we we are looking at is microscopic. The irreversibility of many reactions gives rise to the 2nd law of thermodynamics that not only defines randomness, but also implies that the universe can never return to a previous state. If nothing else, this provides the first time where a scientific law of a system is not derivable from reduction into individual particles. This might be a clue that even if all physical events are deterministic, a system may still contain randomness.
Chemistry contains fundamental indeterminism due to the Kinetic Molecular Theory, statistical mechanics, and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Regardless of how deterministic quantum theory turns out to be, there is randomness in chemistry. There are amorphous solids and crystalline solids. The former has a random arrangement of atoms, the latter has a regular pattern of atoms. Liquids and gases have random molecular motion. This does not mean that the molecules have motion outside the laws of particle physics. It just means that there is no regular pattern or organization as a system. I have heard it said that molecular motion in gases and liquids is deterministic because the molecules move according to Newton’s Laws, even if we can not measure or predict their paths. It is conceivable that they could be measured and defined. Yes, it is in fact conceivable, but is this on point or beside the point? First, let’s be clear as to exactly what we are up against. Gas molecules are not elastic spheres that just bounce off each other. The collisions are inelastic and their shape is irregular and always changing. The cloud of valence electrons on the outside of the molecules is ever changing. The elasticity of the collisions is dependent on exactly where the electrons are at a particular moment in time. The internal vibrations and the spin states of the molecule are quantized and also in a continual state of flux. Thus, we do not have the math to describe what happens when two molecules collide. But an even greater fallacy with thinking the motion of gas and liquid molecules is deterministic, is that conception or prediction implies an observer. What conceivable observer can make use of the fact that the colliding molecules can be predicted by Newtonian physics. Let me explain this bit of philosophy further with an analogous example. Imagine people betting on the flip of the coin. This we agree is a deterministic event governed by classical physics. However, the process could be described as random to an observer if there were no pattern observable other than a 50% chance that the outcome were heads. It doesn’t matter that it is conceivable that a skilled coin flipper could reliably toss heads or tails when they so desired. What matters is if the overall process as observed is fully random, fully determined or if it is at some stochastic middle ground. If all observers agree a process is random, determinism does not apply. So when we move to biology, we should ask ourselves if individual cells observe the process in question as random or do they observe a deterministic process. I seriously doubt the ability of cells to perceive the collision of water molecules, both within and outside the cell, as anything but random.
When we move from the chemical domain to the biological domain, the first question to ask is what is the scale of the system. Is the scale large enough that the indeterminism foundational to chemistry allows us to “average out” the randomness of molecular motion? The cell, the basic building block of all living things, though microscopic, actually contains on the order of 1010 individual water molecules. This seems like a large enough number to average out the random motion of individual molecules. However, many important cellular processes are localized in even smaller organelles and cell membrane receptors that are many orders of magnitude smaller.
The most fundamental process of living cells is keeping the important molecules within the cell but still allowing other molecules and ions to pass through the membrane as needed. This is done at a molecular level where the randomness of molecular motion is quite important. Diffusion, facilitated diffusion, and active transport strategies are used to ensure the correct concentration of most all of the important molecules is maintained within the cell under different environmental conditions. This is what we call homeostasis. Homeostasis is a strategy employed only by living organisms. If not for life, the word and concept of homeostasis would not even exist. Homeostasis is required by cells because cells have to deal with a changing environment. For example, when a bacterium finds itself in an environment that has plenty of glucose, it uses the enzymes that digest glucose to provide the cell with energy. But if the cell moves to an environment that has no glucose but does have lactose, the cell will detect the lactose and start producing the enzymes that break this sugar down to extract energy from it. The perception and reaction of a living cell to its environment is something totally different than the causation found in all of physics. No matter how complex a galaxy is that the physicist studies, they do not have to worry that the stars will change what they are doing because they sense a change in their environment. Planets do not turn off processes due to lack of food or because they sense too many ions are present. Living systems are fundamentally different than any mere physical system.
This directly leads to the catastrophic misunderstanding that determinist philosophers have been suffering from since philosophy was developed by the early Greeks. Living systems have a purpose, nonliving systems do not. All organisms are built around the idea that the organism should survive and reproduce for the continuation of life. Comparing systems without a purpose to a system that has a purpose is not valid. Determinism is not meaningful in systems with a purpose. For one thing the math is different. Classical physics uses simple algebraic and differential equations. Living systems use complex algorithms and Boolean mathematics.
The information is different in living systems. In physics the only information available is directly tied to the object or particle like location, momentum, charge, etc.. In biology all of the objects and particles have this information as well, but there is also stored information in DNA as well. Where did this information that is stored in DNA come from? It can’t come from physics or chemistry because there is no stored repository of information in either of those subjects. This information was arrived at in-deterministically by evolution and can be used as needed by the cell for its purpose of living and reproducing.
Cells build proteins one at a time at sites called ribosomes and these ribosomes are minuscule. Thus, the random motion of molecules makes the process indeterministic. Proteins are built from a nucleic acid template that specifies the exact position and order of the amino acids in the protein. Just as importantly, the process of protein synthesis is highly regulated by the cell. Proteins are synthesized when and if they are needed, and the amount of each protein synthesized is controlled by feedback mechanisms. Feedback mechanisms imply a need to control for random or unexpected deviations. Causation of protein synthesis is a contingent causation. There may need to be 3 or 4 independent factors that must be satisfied to initiate the process.
I find it astounding how philosophers have not yet come to terms with this difference in causation in living systems as opposed to physical processes. Philosophers give examples of determinism like falling dominos and colliding billiard balls and then feel no shame in saying that genetics causes behavior in a similar fashion. The causation is fundamentally different. If you can not see this, you can’t be much of a philosopher. Determinist philosophers must be forced to explain in detail how cause and effect works in living systems with contingent causation and in light of the random processes of diffusion, mutation, and sexual reproduction. Most relevant to free will would be explaining the function at the neuronal synapse junctions. These are only about 100 water molecules wide, which means that the indeterminate processes of diffusion and receptor binding must be accounted for. Also, the propagation of a signal by associative neurons is through a contingent mechanism like what was described for protein synthesis, but to an even greater degree. Neuroscientist, Peter Tse, has termed causation of neuronal propagation as criteria causation. He gives many examples of how neurons are constantly resetting the criteria of neural propagation based on different factors happening throughout the brain. This he concludes only works in an indeterministic system.
So in going back to the bridge building analogy, compatibilism is not very objectionable to libertarians when discussing free will and not very objectionable to determinists when describing the nature of the universe. But unfortunately, compatibilists do not ever bridge the explanatory gap to get free will through deterministic causation. The libertarian intuition of indeterministic causation being needed for free will seems the most plausible at the current time. I have not fully explained the mechanism of how we obtain and use free will within an indeterministic framework here. But I have previously written on that very topic here:
“The Mechanism of Free Will” and in my book here: “What Determined the Warthog?”

This paper has been tossed around in series of deranged creationist posts without, in my opinion, any thorough review of the actual data in any of the posts. For those interested I'm presenting a review, with as much academic rigor as possible while trying to maintain clarity for lay people in the sub.
I'd like to start with why I think I'm qualified to address this: BSc in Microbiology (Math and Biophysics minors), and PhD in Biomedical Engineering (Developmental Biomechanics). I've done bacteriology research, as well as research on the evolutionary and developmental aspects of organ and tissue development/mechanics. This will be relatively long, so I apologize. I will summarize each section (Intro, methods and results) of the paper.
Introduction
Flagella are complex organelles with distinct structures, and around 24 structural proteins had been identified across several species at the time of publication (2007). These proteins make substructures such as a basal body, motor, switch, hook, filament and export apparatus. There is broad variety in specific flagellar structure across species, but specific proteins share broad homology - indicating common ancestry. Not much was known at the time about the specific phylogenetic (the hierarchical lineage of protein evolution) relationships between these proteins at the time. Based on structural similarities with other membrane-bound proteins, it seemed that these proteins were derived from some sort of proton-based secretion-system - and shows strong homology with Type-3 Secretion System (TTSS) - indicating common ancestry. So, flagella and TTSS share common ancestry - although flagella likely arose earlier.
Methods
The authors obtained genome data from 41 unique genus of bacteria all containing flagella from 11 higher order phyla from published genome databases (KEGG). They then performed phylogenetic profiling on these 41 genomes. They various BLAST techniques to identify orthologs between the species (proteins that are found in all species, that serve the same or very similar function and is derived from a common ancestor). Orthologous genes/proteins help identify phylogenetic relationships based on differences in their sequences. Closely related genes are more similar, distantly related genes are less similar. They used flagellar proteins from a few species to make sure they get as many orthologs as possible.
They then quantified similarity between core proteins within each species. They performed phylogenetic analysis on the flagellar proteins. Amino acid sequence homology was used to determine relatedness of proteins and generate most likely phylogenetic trees (these show which proteins would evolve earlier, and relationships with newer proteins - much like the tree of life). They then compare each protein to 14 proteins that are present in all flagellar systems (these would have been present from the earlier parts of evolution since they are present in all species.)
They also develop a bacterial species tree using alignments of ribosomal proteins (present in all domains of life), very similar to the previous analysis.
Results
They identify and classify all core proteins based on their function and presence in different species. This is summarized in Figure 1. This gives us an idea of the protein orthologs between the species, and which species have what specific components. Not particularly interesting for the evolution - but useful for understanding the system and its diversity among species, as well as identifying the structural components of the flagella.
They then compare the phylogenetic trees generated by flagellar protein homology and homology of ribosomal proteins. This comparison is meant to show that based on the assumption of evolution - the evolutionary patterns of the flagellar proteins, and the evolutionary patterns of the bacterial species based on ribosomal proteins agree with each other - except for some incongruencies based on horizontal gene transfers (boxed species Figure 2). Horizontal gene transfers are events where different closely species share genes between each other. This is different from traditional evolution which includes vertical gene transfer by cell division within the same species. This strongly suggests that flagellar proteins evolved along with the bacterial species in the same order.
Figure 3 shows the homology relationships between core proteins. The links and the number show how many species share homology between these two genes. They identified 10 genes with really high rates of homology - indicating these were generated by duplication events - and all represent extracellular parts of the flagellum. This is based on E. coli flagellar complex. They then also analyzed similarities based on the other species' genomes and found further homology between core flagellar proteins. Flagellar proteins had very low homology with non-flagellar proteins except for a few (mostly related to secretion system proteins). Combining these analyses, the authors develop detailed phylogenetic trees of these core proteins (Supplementary Figures 5a,b).
Discussion

• Identified 24 core flagellar proteins
• Sequence homology between these proteins indicate common ancestry through duplications (paralogous)
• Protein phylogeny is mostly congruent with bacterial phylogeny (except for gene transfer events)
• These core proteins diversified before the shared ancestor of Bacteria
• Phylogeny of these core proteins reveal paralogous relationships derived from gene duplication
• Order of protein evolution matches previous hypothesis of inside-out assembly of flagella
  • Inner components appear first in phylogeny, outer components appear later
• Order of assembly is same as evolutionary history - analogous to embryonic development of animals
• Core protein homologies show the phylogenetic relationship between specific core proteins with high homology (earliest appearing flagellar genes)
• Overall, this paper uses the concepts of homology to identify phylogenetic relationships between flagellar evolution which mimics the inside-out assembly of the flagella.
• My opinions:
  • The fact that evolution and assembly follow the same sequence is highly compelling.
  • Secretions systems with added extracellular components (even if short), would increase fitness of the bacteria since it would provide advantages immediately - chemosensing, or adherence to surroundings
  • Same principle for motor components - movements within the extracellular flagellar components would improve fitness by improving motility (even if marginally)
  • Congruence between bacterial evolution and flagellar protein evolution is very compelling.

If you have any questions of would like to discuss specific bits of data, please let me know in the comments! I'm sure I missed some details so I would like to apologize in advance.

Now, speaking of faith, you have to trust me in this series, I am actually building towards a point, but it will take a lot of construction to get to where I believe we are headed, hang in there for a cosmic surprise ending.

Previously ...

In my fifth posting, I summarized the mechanism (Kinetic Gas Theory, Mean-Free Path) that allows air to occupy a partial vacuum: such as that produced by your lungs, thereby allowing you to live for a few minutes more. It is the same mechanism that allows planes to fly, originally called Bernoulli's Principle, but not explained at all by Bernoulli back in the day.

Speaking of bonding, from Moonraker:
Hugo Drax aboard the space station: (Hastily grabs pistol, trains it on Bond who has cornered him) At least I shall have the pleasure of putting you out of my misery, Mr. Bond.
(Drax chuckles as Bond raises his hands)
Hugo Drax : Desolated, Mr. Bond?
Bond : (Bond shoots Drax with a poison dart from his wrist-gun. Drax, gasping, drops his pistol and staggers backwards toward the airlock) Heartbroken, Mr. Drax. Allow me.
(He opens the airlock door and pushes Drax in)
Bond : Take a giant step for mankind!
(He closes the door and ejects Drax into space)
Dr. Holly Goodhead : (rejoining 007) Where's Drax?
Bond : Oh, he had to fly.

What I did not summarize in the last posting is how that mean-free path action allows you to live, because gas flow is necessary, but insufficient for life.
That is Chemistry and it requires faith, since Chemistry is just applied Physics which has gaps, holes and is abundantly incomplete since it uses mathematical models of nature with little explanatory power (we trust that their predictive nature means that they are correct, while remaining ignorant as to why or how.) And earlier in my fourth posting. I summarized why logical systems containing a "small amount of arithmetic" such as mathematics, are incomplete according to Torkel Franzén's writings on Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems I and II. The tedious formal proofs of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems by Hilbert and Bernays don't explain much either.
As the vampire in Fright Night says to Roddy McDowell holding up a cross with shaking hands, "You have to have faith for that to work!" (It's not a James Bond quote, but I couldn't resist.)
In that fifth posting, I mentioned in discussing Quantum Mechanics (QM) that entanglement involves superposition (you can think of this as uncertainty in position and momentum of low-mass particles like electrons), the no-cloning rule (which means no observed information or energy coming in or going out of the entangled system), teleportation (which means that those uncertain particles can change position instantly and tunnel through barriers), that those entangled systems have constant entropy (which I will describe next), and the instantaneous collapse (even across vast distances) of entanglement's wave function through the phenomenon called decoherence, which will most likely never be observable and understood scientifically.

What is entropy?

Simply put, entropy (quantified as "s") is the measure of a particular kind of order (s is then smaller) and disorder (s is then larger) for any system. Closed systems have entropy that is always increasing (ds >= 0, which means the differential change in s is non-negative and s is never decreasing), and that implies that the components of those systems will exchange entropy while the total stays fairly constant (a reversible process, like moving something) or increases (an irreversible process, like breaking and frying an egg.)
Another way to look at entropy is that the total energy put into an engine does not end up in the work output by that engine. Some of it is irreversibly lost as waste heat and some irreversibly goes into wear and tear on the engine itself. That gradually disordered engine will eventually wear out and produce less work, as it wears out. This also happens to living beings over time. :^(

From Goldfinger:
Q: "..reception on the dashboard here. Audio-visual, range a hundred and fifty miles."
Bond: "Ingenious, and useful too. Allow a man to stop off for a quick one en route."
Q: "It has not been perfected, out of years of patient research, entirely for that purpose, 007. And incidentally, we'd appreciate its return, along with all your other equipment, intact for once, when you return from the field."
Bond: "Well, you'd be surprised the amount of wear and tear that goes on out there in the field."

Entropy originally was identified by Rudolf Clausius in the studies of heat produced in boring the barrels of cannon in late 18th century Britain by Count Rumford. Heat was produced by friction and the boring tools wore out. So many plowshares wrought from the swords of war science!
In the late 19th century, Ludwig Boltzmann found that entropy) was related to the logarithm of the total number of microstates (identified by the omega symbol Ω) of the system and statistical thermodynamics was born:
s = kB ln Ω [where kB is the Boltzmann constant and is fundamental.]
A simple way to think about Boltzmann entropy, is that the greater the number of microstates in the system, the greater the entropy, but only growing at the logarithmic rate. Using the aging engine example, the old engine has a variety of new states of operation: it smokes, rattles, vibrates and produces more different kinds of noise and increasingly less work than when it was new. Just like we do as we get older.

Entangled Systems Are Different (et vive la différence!)

However, for entangled systems, which are closed and not interacting with the environment (no cloning) until decoherence collapses the wave function: while still entangled, the entropy is constant and NOT increasing (ds = 0) unlike closed systems that are not entangled. So, atoms with spin-paired electrons in entangled atomic orbitals and molecules with spin-paired electrons in entangled molecular bonding orbitals constructed of atomic orbitals ... those little entangled engines of chemistry don't run down and wear out, as in the covalent bonding in diamonds.

From Diamonds Are Forever:
Felix Leiter: I give up. I know the diamonds are in the body, but where?
Bond: Alimentary, Dr. Leiter...

The strongest chemical bond in the universe is actually not the diamond carbon to carbon sp³ single tetrahedral crystal bonds, first prize goes to the dinitrogen triple bond present in 80% of our atmosphere, which can be enhanced artificially by adding strong polarizing atoms on the ends of the two nitrogen atoms connected by the triple bond. Called "protonation" by hydrogen or fluorine, this draws charge away from the triple bond and lowers the energy of the bonding orbitals: to win the prize as the strongest bond known to science.

• See the figure 9.28 text in this book below explaining bonding orbitals (lower energy) and antibonding orbitals (higher energy) and why these covalent molecular orbital bonds are so strong). (This is quite an excellent Creative Commons general chemistry textbook, I must say, better than the Dickerson, Gray and Haight Chemical Principles that I studied back in the day, and it also includes a chunk of the Physical Chemistry by Barrow, and the molecular orbital theory from Inorganic Chemistry by Huheey that I studied as well.)
• See the little chart with the numbers in the abstract of an article specifically on this phenomenon.

That extremely strong triple bond makes atmospheric dinitrogen very inert chemically (a serious, but just barely solvable problem for plant roots and single celled organisms working symbiotically in adding nitrogen into the food chain for all proteins and enzymes, some lipids and all nucleic acids, in a process called "nitrogen fixing".) Single nitrogen in organic chemicals forms very strong and polarizing bonds with a variety of elements, releasing energy quickly, such that all explosives are various compounds of nitrogen.

From Die Another Day:
Bond: (after he gives Col. Moon the briefcase full of diamonds, rigged with explosives) Don't blow it all at once.

You can tell the dinitrogen bond is strong, because of the intense higher frequency (frequency ν is linear to energy: E=hν) blue light that it scatters from the sun, which is why the sky is blue. The phenomenon is called Rayleigh Scattering, and the blue light is scattered at a right angle to the light coming from the sun, which is why why the morning and evening sun make such a deep blue sky straight above you. If you put your fist up blocking the sun (never, ever look at the sun directly) you will notice that the area around the sun is not very blue and that is because it's hard to make that bank shot in a straight line. Interestingly, metallic gold (Au) absorbs all the blue light from incandescent sources, like the sun and the blue sky, reflecting the remaining unique golden color that remains after blue is subtracted, so beloved by many.

From Goldfinger:
Goldfinger shows off his industrial laser by having it slowly track toward Bond, lying supine and lashed to slab of gold.
Goldfinger: This is gold, Mr Bond. All my life, I have been in love with its color, its brilliance, its divine heaviness. I welcome any enterprise that will increase my stock- which is considerable.
Bond: I think you've made your point, Goldfinger. Thank you for the demonstration.
Goldfinger: Choose your next witticism carefully, Mr Bond — it may be your last. The purpose of our two previous encounters is now very clear to me. I do not intend to be disturbed by another. Goodnight, Mr Bond. (leaves Bond to the tracking laser)
Bond: Do you expect me to talk?
Goldfinger: (looks back, laughing) No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!

However, that inertness of atmospheric dinitrogen also allows you to breath and live, if you have a little faith and open your mouth to let the air flow in along the mean free path into the partial vacuum of your lungs (fully described in my last posting about halfway down here).
The other 20% of the air you breath is double-bonded dioxygen and that is a 4 to 1 ratio of dnitrogen to dioxygen in the atmosphere. In the watery surface of your lung, however, due to the inertness of dinitrogen and the partial polarity of dioxygen and its hydrogen bonding to water, dioxygen dissolves at a ratio of 2 to 1 over dinitrogen. So the colliding air molecules flow in through the mean free path statistically, but when the air molecules hit the watery surface of the lung, the dinitrogen is 8 times as likely to bounce out over dioxygen, making the water in your lung a chemical concentrator for oxygen. OSHA, by the way declares anything over 80% dnitrogen or under 19% dioxygen to be hazardous, and also OSHA declares that levels above 23.5% dioxygen to be hazardous to the alveoli of lungs over time), so our kind of life, that breathes air is quite finely balanced.

The Argument Regarding Reversible Versus Irreversible In QM

There is an argument between physicists and chemists regarding quantum mechanics where the physicists say that QM processes are totally reversible and chemists argue that there is a punctuated equilibrium of reversibility in complex chemical and especially biochemical processes regarding life.
In physical chemistry, reactions accomplish their transitions by having reversibility up until the presence of a form of the incoming reactants called an "activated complex", which proceeds to drive the energy of the system over the required energy hump and to the lower energy state of the products of the reaction.
Reaction rates are ruled by the slow step in a chain of reaction transitions, and each transition can have its reaction rate sped up by the use of catalysts that participate but remain available in the system to mediate the next transition of an activated complex into products.
Interestingly, gas phase reactions ARE mostly reversible in the physical world, outside of the lab or the production facility at the chemical plant, where we coerce processes to move in certain productive and profitable directions.
This is why the search for life by telescopes of varying kinds is always a search for what the NASA scientists call the "water hole" which is now considered a necessary piece of evidence of extraterrestrial life in the universe.

Life Is Water and Water Is Life

It is in liquid phase and especially in hydrogen-bonding liquid water, where life gets its ability to reliably construct proteins, enzymes, lipids and nucleic acids by alternating transitions between the reversible and the irreversible. These transitions between the stability of entangled bonds and their decoherence and construction of new metastable entangled bonds until the activated complex is constructed and final catalysis (typically) drives the system over the energy hump irreversibly to the intended entangled products are what supports living systems. Everything and everyone around you does covalent chemistry, and they and you are utterly and minutely entangled systems.
So, you never see messenger RNA spooling backwards out of a ribosome and turning protein into amino acids. Protein transcription only moves in the forward direction from amino acids transcribing messenger RNA at the ribosome like a tape reader and spooling off protein chains, entirely due to the reaction occurring in aqueous (watery) solution where there is a well-regulated and thoroughly cool enough environment to prevent local heating from undoing nature's work.

From Molecular Reaction Dynamics by Raphael D. Levine in the library, section 6.1.1 The Point of No Return and the Transition State, p. 203:
"Dealing with thermal reactants and with barriers that are high compared to thermal energies [at the temperature of the of cool water as the reaction medium] the assumption is quite reasonable that if the barrier has been crossed, the motion downhill will not reverse upon itself. At higher energies [like a hot gas or hot solid medium] when the barrier becomes less of a handicap, the barrier can be recrossed. But Transition State Theory is intended to be useful at ordinary temperatures [at an aqueous medium] when, due to the Boltzmann factor, there is not much excess energy for crossing the barrier."

So the answer to the question "What is life?" is in effect, water. It allows us to breath in oxygen and perform the biochemical functions of the cell in support of our moment to moment existence. Here are some detailed references on how breathing works: and knowing the details, you might want to stop smoking anything and get your Influenza shots and updated Covid boosters:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiration_(physiology))
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulmonary_alveolus
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulmonary_surfactant
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiratory_system#Gas_exchange

Shining A Light On Animate Matter Lowers Entropy Whereas Shining A Light On Inanimate Matter Raises Entropy

Like Professor Brian Greene and Professor Edward Witten, Professor Max Tegmark is a brilliant physicist and they all three are fans of the ascientific fantasy of string theory, and probably a few more of the ascientific fantasies on Sabine Hossenfelder's list (2/3 of the way down here.) Bless their hearts, but nevertheless they are each brilliant expositors of scientific physics and are really great to listen to. In this reasonably short video, Max Tegmark describes the quantum mechanical difference between living matter and non-living matter. [Stick with it through the Spekkens information theory statistical QM descriptions, he is talking to other QM theorists.]
Max says that when photons "scan" through non-living matter the entropy increases. However, when photons "scan" through living matter, the entropy decreases. Living things respond to external stimuli and evolve, react and learn accordingly. Living things evolve by becoming more complex in a highly ordered and genetically remembered way, and the most ordered (lowest entropy) living organ (or frankly, system of any kind) is the nervous system and the brain. And the most complex and ordered system that we know of in the universe is the human brain, which is more like an analog switching system and not digital at all: there are no registers, just nerve cells interacting with the voltage differences created in axon/dendrite switching networks.
A fruit fly brain has 20 million synaptic connections, but a human brain has 100 trillion connections all firing and changing neural voltages even when we sleep. One could argue that makes for a lot of moving parts and higher entropy (s = kB ln Ω), however that brain has effectively one state (Ω=1) and that is your consciousness, and the natural log of one is zero: an astonishingly low entropy.
Also, there is no "small amount of arithmetic" because there is no integer or floating point unit, the brain emulates those digital systems in the gray matter with vastly slower performance than your typical calculator.
Hence we living systems with brains are capable of formal logic proving our theorems to be true according to Gödel's Completeness Theorem, whereas digital systems which use a "small amount of arithmetic" just to find each instruction address, memory register and virtual address are permanently restricted to following Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems I and II. So, we should stop worrying about the coming digital supremacy over humans, or any other living beings, for that matter. Computers cannot deduce with strong logic, they can only induce with weak logic. A robot can kill you, but a human programmer will have engineered your demise, either intentionally or by neglect. Robots will never be certain of the difference between what is right and what is wrong. We can have faith and make reasoned decisions based on it.

From The Man with the Golden Gun:
Bond: Moneypenny, you are better than a computer.
Moneypenny: In all sorts of ways! But, you never take advantage of them.

Seeing the Correct Path through the Fog of Reality and Ideality

When light enters the eye and interacts with the rods (black and white) and the cones (colors), the optic nerves stream those raw physical optical signals through the thalamus in the middle of your head and stream that into the visual cortex in the back of your head. In the visual cortex, raw signals become stereo vision with full colors, recognized shapes and objects, like the face of your parents and grandparents, etc., and that logical visual stream passes back through the thalamus with all the metadata tags on the recognized elements and then up to the cerebral cortex at the top of your head, where your world view is integrated with the other four senses whose signals have arrived ahead of vision due to less processing overhead (which is why foot races start with a gun and not a starting light.)
Interestingly, there are six times as much processed logical visual signals flowing through the thalamus from the visual cortex as the original raw physical visual flow from the optic nerves. This explains why those people you see walking down the street having a conversation without a cell phone are really seeing someone they are talking to. Their echoes from the past are replaying from the visual cortex and appear as real as the raw optical flow, maybe even more real.
What I perceive when I chant to the Gohonzon arises entirely from inside me. What a digital system sees when it looks at the Gohonzon will not likely ever arise from inside, it will arise from code, once again, written by a human programmer, or generated by a machine programmed by a human programmer.
I give you Abraham Lincoln as proof of the permanent supremacy of living beings over the inanimate. He demonstrates the difference between (1) the imperfect expedient means employed by all the Buddhas to steadily improve the lives of living beings, and (2) the impractical and impossible perfection of thought, word and deed. No machine will ever get this right.
Describing Lincoln, historian Jon Meacham notes that there were three critical moments that reflected his principles while employing the expedient means of his Presidency, which always bent towards the direction of the Declaration of Independence as his personal compass:

1. Immediately after his first election as President in February 1861, the Crittenden compromise, which was immensely popular even with his staff, was placed on the table by a Kentucky Senator to preserve slavery and extend it into some of the territories, to avoid war with the South. Lincoln said no. If slavery would be allowed to move into the territories, it would take root for decade upon decade, upon decade.
2. The moment he enters office in March 1861, Fort Sumter is under siege. Secretary Seward, General Winfield Scott (Anaconda Plan) and others are not enthusiastic about fortifying Sumter. Lincoln said no. This is the point beyond which we will not concede, "and so the war came", as Lincoln said.
3. In 1864, as Lincoln believes he will lose re-election, Lincoln is told by the Republican National Committee that if he keeps emancipation as a precondition for peace, he will lose and he needs to abandon this. In the middle of August in 1864, less than three months from the election, Lincoln said no. As he put it, "men act on incentive." How could he ask the black men under arms, who were defending the constitution of the United States to fight for anything other than their freedom? Then General Sherman takes Atlanta, the South is cut in half and Lincoln wins.

Frederick Douglass, at a statue raising to Lincoln after his death, said,

"Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined."

That is the very definition of expedient means. It is nini funi (two but not two) with the true path: two in appearance, but one in essence.

Meacham goes on:
"History is not a fairy tale. There can be light. There can be dark.
But the agents, and Lincoln understood this in the marrow of his bones, the human agents are imperfect.
And so if you're looking for a perfect embodiment of light, you should look to the church, look to the world of philosophy, look to the world of fiction, look to the world of legend, but we live in a political world.
We sit in a moment now where our divisions are as deep as they have been since the 1850s. we have competing visions of America that are not just about the mediation of differences.
We're not arguing about marginal tax rates, here, we're arguing about the very understanding of power and democracy and will politics be a mediation of differences or will it be total war."

Like the expedient means that he regularly employed, Lincoln is nini funi with the true Buddha: appearing an imperfect and indifferent agent of the Lotus Sutra, but in essence the Buddha of Beginningless Time. Because of his faith and dedication, he did not live to reach the nation's Centennial in 1876, falling 11 years short by assassination. However, after his death, or perhaps because of it: the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments allowed the Union that he lived and died for to reach many of the milestones laid out in his personal compass of the Declaration of Independence.
With the same kind of faith that Lincoln had in the better angels of human nature, we will also navigate through the current river of storms to reach the 2030 Centennial of the SGI. Even if individually, some of us don't make it through to the promised land of 2030.
Of course, that would depend on the noblesse oblige of Bianca ProMAGA and the SGI Whisperers kindly allowing us to continue doing Kosen Rufu.

From Dr. No:
Bond: World domination. That same old dream. Our asylums are full of people who think they're Napoleon... or God.

Problem 2: Unguided Chemical Processes Cannot Explain the Origin of the Genetic Code
Let’s assume, again, that a primordial sea filled with life’s building blocks did exist on the early Earth, and somehow it formed proteins and other complex organic molecules. Origin of life theorists believe that the next step in the origin of life is that — entirely by chance — more and more complex molecules formed until some began to self-replicate. From there, they believe Darwinian natural selection took over, favoring those molecules which were better able to make copies. Eventually, they assume, it became inevitable that these molecules would evolve complex machinery — like that used in today’s genetic code — to survive and reproduce.

and we already have a problem. Abiogenesis did not happen purely by chance, it happened by specific chemical reactions. and if you don't know chemistry isn't random

Have modern theorists explained how this crucial bridge from inert nonliving chemicals to self-replicating molecular systems took place? The most prominent hypothesis for the origin of the first life is called the “RNA world.” In living cells, genetic information is carried by DNA, and most cellular functions are carried out by proteins. However, RNA is capable of both carrying genetic information and catalyzing some biochemical reactions. As a result, some theorists postulate the first life might have used RNA alone to fulfill all these functions.
But there are many problems with this hypothesis.
For one, the first RNA molecules would have to arise by unguided, non-biological chemical processes. But RNA is not known to assemble without the help of a skilled laboratory chemist intelligently guiding the process. New York University chemist Robert Shapiro critiqued the efforts of those who tried to make RNA in the lab, stating: “The flaw is in the logic — that this experimental control by researchers in a modern laboratory could have been available on the early Earth.”15

there are actually known ways for RNA to form on a prebiotic earth. for example, clay has been shown the be able to absorb and catalyze nucleotides, forming RNA https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.2113/gselements.1.3.145. here is a review article that goes into all of the research on origin of life, including the formation of RNA.

Second, while RNA has been shown to perform many roles in the cell, there is no evidence that it could perform all the necessary cellular functions currently carried out by proteins.16

this claim comes from Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, p. 304. the problem with Myers claim in the book is that he is comparing the needs of modern life to the first life, which would've been immensely more simple https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2926753/

Third, the RNA world hypothesis does not explain the origin of genetic information.

but this does https://iubmb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/iub.146

RNA world advocates suggest that if the first self-replicating life was based upon RNA, it would have required a molecule between 200 and 300 nucleotides in length.17 However, there are no known chemical or physical laws that dictate the order of those nucleotides.18 To explain the ordering of nucleotides in the first self-replicating RNA molecule, materialists must rely on sheer chance. But the odds of specifying, say, 250 nucleotides in an RNA molecule by chance is about 1 in 10150 — below the universal probability boundary, or events which are remotely possible to occur within the history of the universe.19 Shapiro puts the problem this way:
The sudden appearance of a large self-copying molecule such as RNA was exceedingly improbable. … [The probability] is so vanishingly small that its happening even once anywhere in the visible universe would count as a piece of exceptional good luck.20

the 200 and 300 nucleotide length comes from this article from nature https://www.nature.com/articles/35053176. here is the quote

The class I ligase is an excellent starting point for attempts to evolve a replicase but does have one drawback. Its minimal catalytic domain is about 100 nucleotides long. When coupled to additional domains that may be required for proper template binding, fidelity and strand separation, the total length could approach 200–300 nucleotides. The longer the replicase, the more difficult the problem of replication, so shorter replicases should be looked for. One approach would be to use more highly activated nucleotide substrates, such as the phosphor-imidazolides. As these substrates are more reactive, less rate enhancement would be required to achieve extension rates in the range of one nucleotide per minute or per second, and a simpler and shorter ribozyme might suffice. Clearly, there are many possible approaches to evolving an RNA replicase, all of which bear investigation.

as you can see, it's saying nothing of the sort. not only that but this article counters the whole rna is too complex argument https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3495036/
​

Fourth — and most fundamentally — the RNA world hypothesis does not explain the origin of the genetic code itself. In order to evolve into the DNA / protein-based life that exists today, the RNA world would need to evolve the ability to convert genetic information into proteins. However, this process of transcription and translation requires a large suite of proteins and molecular machines — which themselves are encoded by genetic information. This poses a chicken-and-egg problem, where essential enzymes and molecular machines are needed to perform the very task that constructs them.

​

The Chicken and the DVD
To appreciate this problem, consider the origin of the first DVD and DVD player. DVDs are rich in information, but without the machinery of a DVD player to read the disk, process its information, and convert it into a picture and sound, the disk would be useless. But what if the instructions for building the first DVD player were only found encoded on a DVD? You could never play the DVD to learn how to build a DVD player. So how did the first disk and DVD player system arise? The answer is obvious: a goal directed process — intelligent design — is required to produce both the player and the disk at the same time.
In living cells, information-carrying molecules (e.g. DNA or RNA) are like the DVD, and the cellular machinery which reads that information and converts it into proteins are like the DVD player. Just like the DVD analogy, genetic information can never be converted into proteins without the proper machinery. Yet in cells, the machines required for processing the genetic information in RNA or DNA are encoded by those same genetic molecules — they perform and direct the very task that builds them.
This system cannot exist unless both the genetic information and transcription / translation machinery are present at the same time, and unless both speak the same language. Biologist Frank Salisbury explained this problem in a paper in American Biology Teacher not long after the workings of the genetic code were first uncovered:
It’s nice to talk about replicating DNA molecules arising in a soupy sea, but in modern cells this replication requires the presence of suitable enzymes. … [T]he link between DNA and the enzyme is a highly complex one, involving RNA and an enzyme for its synthesis on a DNA template; ribosomes; enzymes to activate the amino acids; and transfer-RNA molecules. … How, in the absence of the final enzyme, could selection act upon DNA and all the mechanisms for replicating it? It’s as though everything must happen at once: the entire system must come into being as one unit, or it is worthless. There may well be ways out of this dilemma, but I don’t see them at the moment.21
Despite decades of work, origin-of-life theorists are still at a loss to explain how this system arose. In 2007, Harvard chemist George Whitesides was given the Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society. During his acceptance speech, he offered this stark analysis, reprinted in the respected journal, Chemical and Engineering News:
The Origin of Life. This problem is one of the big ones in science. It begins to place life, and us, in the universe. Most chemists believe, as do I, that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth. How? I have no idea.22
Similarly, the aforementioned article in Cell Biology International concludes: “New approaches to investigating the origin of the genetic code are required. The constraints of historical science are such that the origin of life may never be understood.”23 That is, they may never be understood unless scientists are willing to consider goal-directed scientific explanations like intelligent design.
But there is a much deeper problem with theories of chemical evolution, as well as biological evolution. This pertains not just to the ability to process genetic information via a genetic code, but the origin of that information itself.

here is a paper explaining the evolution of protein synthesis https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3312679/
conclusion: Luskin still has not present any problems for evolution or abiogenesis and dose not seem to actually look at the scientific lecture
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original article https://www.discovery.org/a/24041/#fn16

Covinfo's Ten Problems with the Covid19 Vaccines (Updated for August 26th 2021)
The current Covid19 vaccines have 10 main problems:

1. The spike protein is cytotoxic.
2. The emergence of immune escape variants.
3. The potential for antibody dependent enhancement.
4. The potential for autoimmune disorders.
5. The narrow design focus of the vaccines.
6. There are alternative treatments to both prevent and treat covid.
7. They are trying to jab everyone, even people who don't need it.
8. There are serious adverse reactions to the vaccines.
9. There is no liability for vaccine producers.
10. There is potential for long term unknown side effects.

I will present a brief overview of each issue and then provide scientific data below for support. Some of these are potential issues and some of the evidence is gathered using small study sizes. This means that some of these issues are only associated with the vaccines and have not been concretely causally linked with the vaccines yet. However, we are in the beginning of the scientific process of discovery and are unfortunately being pressed to take the vaccines immediately. We must therefore make decisions based on what little data is available to us. Given the seriousness of the decision to be vaccinated with an experimental medical intervention, we must not ignore any signals, as they may mean the difference between life and death. Small signals may also indicate important areas of further study. We must take a Gestalt view and consider all the signals together, for only by putting all the evidence together can we hope to achieve a clearer understanding of what may be going on. All of the following information is subject to change as research over time teaches us the truth and nothing contained within should be considered legal or medical advice. This is all my opinion based on my interpretation of the available scientific data.
0. First a Brief Explanation of How the New Covid19 Vaccines are Supposed to Work
There are two types vaccines, the moderna/Pfizer and the Johnson & Johnson/AstraZeneca. Both types use the same core principles to elicit an immune response. The MP type use a lipid nanoparticle and mRNA, whereas the J&JAZ type use an adenovirus and DNA. With the J&JAZ they took an existing virus, removed its normal genetic material and replaced it with a strand of modified DNA. They pump your body full of these adenovirus particles which infect your cells with the modified DNA. This DNA travels from the cytoplasm of your cell into the nucleus of your cell, which houses the rest of your cell's DNA. The modified DNA is then unzipped to produce two strands of mRNA. These messenger RNA strands carry a message, like a work order. They tell your cell what to build and where to put it. The mRNA strands leave the nucleus and are read by the ribosomes which translate the work order. It tells them to construct spike proteins and to anchor them on the membrane of the cell. Once those spike proteins are on the outside of your cells your body's immune cells, the macrophages come along and encounter them. They identify the spike proteins as foreign matter and kill your spike protein expressing cells. They gobble up and analyze the pieces of your newly killed cells and may call in other macrophages and dendritic cells for back up. Once the dendritic cells arrive, they will also destroy the spike expressing cells, believing them to be foreign invaders. They will analyze the pieces of your cells and take them to where the T-cells and B-cells are stored. They show all the parts of the dead cells (including the human parts) to these T- and B-cells, which will create antibodies that will attach to those parts. They're not supposed to create antibodies for your own parts, just for the S-protein. This way, when covid enters your body for real, the immune system already has antibodies to the spike protein and your body can move quickly to combat the virus. The moderna and Pfizer vaccines work in much the same way, except there are fewer steps. The MP vaxxes use lipid nanoparticles that are little bubbles of fat with a strand of mRNA in them. Once these nanoparticles are injected into the body, they get gobbled up by your cells and the nanoparticles release the mrna strands into the cytoplasm of your cell. Your ribosomes then read the mrna, just the same as with the J&JAZ vax and get to work producing spike proteins to display on the membrane of your cell. The rest is identical. (This is a very simplistic explanation of a very complex process, some steps have been skipped over and some processes have been simplified for the sake of brevity but the general gist of the process is accurate).
1. The Dangers of the Spike Protein
The spike protein of the virus, that is also being utilized in the vaccines, is damaging to our cells through 3 mechanisms. The first is that when the spike protein binds to the ACE2 receptor it causes the ACE2 to send signals to the mitochondria within the cell which destroys the mitochondria, eventually killing the cell. The second is that when the spike protein binds to our ACE2 receptors it causes the ACE2 to send signals to other cells which increases the amount of pro-inflammatory agents in the blood. This inflammation damages the tissues. The third way is that when the spike protein binds to the ACE2 of the platelets in our blood, it causes them to clot. Now, the vaccine manufacturers did take steps to make the spike protein more safe. The spike protein has two parts an S1 subunit and an S2 subunit. The S1 is the part that connects to the ACE2, and the S2 is the part that opens up like a knife stabbing the membrane and facilitates fusion between the membrane of the cell and the envelope of the virus. With the vaccines, they modified the S2 subunit so that it could not open up and jab into the cell membranes if it connects with any ACE2 receptors. They thought this would make the spike protein safe, but this assumption is false and if they had taken the time to do more research before rushing to production they would have found that out. It may seem like the jabby bit is what damages the cells, but actually the major damage is caused by the S1 connecting to the ACE2 receptor. Just the S1, by itself without the S2, causes the ACE2 receptor to start the cell signaling processes that cause the mitochondrial damage, the pro-inflammatory response, and the blood clots. OK, but the spike proteins are supposed to be anchored to the membranes of our cells, so how can they do all this damage if they remain planted on the outside of our cells? The spikes are supposed to stay anchored to our cell membranes, and on paper that should be what happens, but in practice they don't seem to remain anchored. There is evidence that in some people the spikes get dislodged and can end up circulating in our system. Once they are in circulation, they are free to connect with the ace2 receptors on our hearts, lungs, brains, etc, and are free to cause the aforementioned inflammation, blood clots, and cell death. Another issue is that the spikes can cause damage without ever being dislodged. The biodistribution data for Pfizer shows that a significant amount of it does make its way throughout the body. When the vaccine seeps into the bloodstream, the adenovirus/nanoparticles will encounter the walls of your veins. They will then transfect the DNA/mRNA into the endothelial cells that line the veins. These cells are supposed to be silky smooth to allow for efficient blood flow. Once the mRNA is read and the spike proteins are displayed on the surface of our endothelial cell membranes, those tubes will no longer be smooth. They'll have tiny little spike proteins sticking out of them. In big veins this will have little to no effect. But in the capillary networks where the tubes narrow considerably and the blood flow slows way down, these spikes will connect with the platelets in the blood. That will cause the blood clotting, even if the spikes themselves never get dislodged from the cell membranes. This will lead to millions of tiny blood clots in the capillaries, which will likely do little harm if they occur in a non-critical location or if they can be cleared out quickly enough (it takes 3 to 6 months to clear a clot). But if these clots occur in critical junctions or if constant boosters ensure that our bodies have ever larger numbers of clots to remove, then our bodies make be overwhelmed and suffer serious harm.
How the virus uses the spike protein to enter human cells: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02039-y
Journal article with evidence that the spike protein by itself can damage cells by binding to ACE2, causing the cells mitochondria to lose their shape and break apart: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.121.318902
Article on how the Covid19 spike protein binds to the ACE2 receptor of our platelets to cause blood clots: https://jhoonline.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13045-020-00954-7
Article explaining that blood clots from the spike protein interacting with our platelets are associated with both COVID-19 infection and vaccination: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003648
Article explains that just the S1 subunit of the spike protein can cause platelets to clot: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.05.21252960v1
Article with evidence that spike proteins do end up circulating in the blood, when they're not supposed to, they're supposed to be anchored on the cell membranes: https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab465/6279075
More evidence that spike proteins do not stay on the cell membranes but end up circulating in the blood. This study aims to explain the blood clots caused by the J&J and AstraZeneca adenovector vaccines, they claim that the DNA isn't properly spliced and the spike proteins end up in the blood causing thrombosis when the spikes attach to the ACE2 receptors of the endothelial cells: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-558954/v1
Article on how the spike protein can cause neurodegeneration: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006291X2100499X?via%3Dihub
Article on how the Covid19 spike protein crosses the blood-brain barrier: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096999612030406X?via%3Dihub
Japanese article on how the Pfizer vax is associated with brain hemorrhaging: https://joppp.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40545-021-00326-7
Article on how AstraZeneca is associated with blood clots in the brain: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2104840
Article on how the spike protein in vaccines can cause cell damage via cell signaling: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7827936/
Article that when the spike protein binds to the ACE2 receptor it causes the release of soluble IL-6R which acts as a extracellular signal which causes inflammation (see the first paper for evidence that the spike causes the release of IL-6R and see the second paper for an explanation of how soluble IL-6R causes pro-inflammatory transcellular signaling: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33284859/ And https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3491447/
Another article that Spike protein from covid or the vaccine causes inflammation through cell signaling, this time there is evidence that the spike protein causes senescence (premature aging) signals in the cell which attracts leukocytes that cause inflammation of the cell: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/JVI.00794-21
Spike protein by itself causes cell damage by eliciting a pro-inflammatory response: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41375-021-01332-z
Vaccine causes heart inflammation if it seeps into the veins. They could help prevent this to some extent by following the standard practice of aspirating the needle (pulling back to see if they're injecting to a vein). But they're not following standard procedure: https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab707/6353927
Pfizer animal testing document that was obtained by Dr. Byram Bridle through a FOI request to the Japanese government which shows the biodistribution of the lipid-nano particles throughout the bodies and organs of the test subjects. This is evidence that the lipid nanoparticles do not stay in the injection site, but instead travel all throughout the body (go to pg 16/23 for the charts showing biodistribution over the course of 48hrs): https://files.catbox.moe/0vwcmj.pdf
Addendum to the above link. This blog post provides easy to understand information (with pictures) on the make-up of the lipid nanoparticles used in the Covid19 vaccines. It shows that the pharmaceutical companies could have designed them to have targeting ligands on the outside, so that the nanoparticles would only transfect the muscle cells. But instead the vax was designed with PEG polymers on the outside, so that the immune system will not be able to pick them up and put them in the trash. The PEG is what Byram Bridle says is the reason the vaccine travels throughout the body and since it does not have targeting ligands, it can transfect any type of cell: https://www.cas.org/resource/blog/understanding-nanotechnology-covid-19-vaccines
Article explaining how they stabilized the S-protein in the vaccines to stop it from opening up. Unfortunately, it still leaves the S1 subunit intact, which is what causes the mitochondrial damage, blood clots, and inflammation by binding with the ACE2: https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/vaccines/tiny-tweak-behind-COVID-19/98/i38
2. Vaccine Enhanced Immune Escape
Vaccine enhanced immune escape occurs when a poorly designed or weak vaccine helps create new variants. This happens in the exact same way as antibiotic resistance and regular old evolution. In the case of evolution, if you want to make an organism stronger, you put it under evolutionarily unfavorable conditions. This way you kill all the weak examples of the organism and leave just the strong ones. If you want heat resistant bacteria, put a petri dish full of bacteria under moderately high heat to kill 99% of the bacteria. Save the 1% that were able to survive, allow them to grow, and repeat the process over and over again while turning up the heat a little each time. Do this until you have a population of bacteria that are all extremely heat resistant. The same process occurs with antibiotic resistance. When you only take half your meds, you kill 99% of the bacteria and leave only the 1% that were more resistant to the drugs. Before they were a small part of the population but you've changed the conditions of their environment, so that they have an advantage. You've killed all the normal bacteria that the mutant variants had to compete with so the antibiotic resistant bacteria are the only strain. So they surge in population to take over your body and now the antibiotics don't work very well either. The principles apply to viruses and vaccines. If you produce a vaccine that elicits a weak immune response, you are creating an unfavorable environment for the virus. You'll kill the weak 99%, and leave the 1% mutant virus particles that are not hindered by the vaccine's antibodies. Whereas before these mutants were only a tiny part of the population and would have been unlikely to gain significantly in population. Now the environment is in their favor and these mutant virus particles surge in number because they no longer have to compete with the other virus particles and your bodies defenses do not work against them. They are now highly likely to transmit to the next person, whereas before they would likely not have been able to leave the host in which the mutation occurred. The current covid vaccines are good at creating variants for three reasons. First, some vaccine manufacturers require two shots and now also boosters because the first shot produces a very weak immune response. Second, the vaccines are very leaky. Even after you have gotten a full immune response from both shots, you can still get and transmit the virus onto others. Well, which virus particles are likely to get passed on by a fully vaccinated person? Clearly they will be those virus particles that have the ability to multiply quickly while avoiding the antibodies produced by the vaccines. This will create very virulent and antibody resistant variants. Watch for these variants in the news as time goes on, we're already seeing things like Delta, Lambda, Epsilon, etc. As we implement boosters, they will start to come at faster and faster rates, and over time data scientists will start to see timed correlations between the implementation of mass boosters and the emergence of new strains. Third, the vaccines do seem to help reduce the severity of the disease when people are infected (although this may change as new variants emerge). Why would this be a concern? Well, because of the leakiness of the vaccines we just spoke about. If you have very low symptoms but you can still get and transmit the virus, then you won't even realize that you're sick and you'll be spreading the virus to even more people as an asymptomatic carrier. So, these vaccines will only increase transmission by creating more and more asymptomatic carriers (although this may not be a bad thing, if everyone in the world gets the virus and everyone is asymptomatic, then there's really no need to care about covid anymore. But this is an unrealistic idealization that is unlikely to occur, some people will still get sick and die or suffer long haul covid). One additional point to address here is the claim that the unvaccinated are causing the emergence of new vaccine resistant variants. Let me be clear, the unvaccinated absolutely have the ability to facilitate the creation of new variants. However, it would require a statistically enormous number of people to get the virus before they could produce a new variant by chance. This is because a mutant virus particle will only make up a small portion of the virus population inside a person's body. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that this particular particle will be able to spread to a new person. Whereas, in the vaccinated, their weak immune response specifically selects for the mutant variants. It is highly likely that if a vaccinated person passes on the virus to another person, the particles they pass on will be those that have the ability to escape from the immune response elicited by the vaccines. An analogy would be if you did an experiment with 500 room temperature petri dishes filled with bacteria and 500 heated petri dishes with bacteria, then found a heat resistant variant but didn't know which dish it came from. It would be absurd to think that the heat resistant strain of bacteria came from the room temperature petri dishes. It would possible, sure, but completely improbable that the heat resistant strain had suddenly appeared in a room temp petri dish. There would be no reason for it to become a dominant strain in that environment. Logically, statistically, and evolutionarily, it must have come from the heated petri dishes. This is a very basic and obvious conclusion, but the media and government bureaucrats in lab coats are trying to tell you that the absurd thing is true. They're trying to say that the unvaccinated (the room temperature petri dishes) are where the vaccine resistant strains are coming from.
Geert Vanden Bossche is a virologist who has been sounding the alarm on this issue, you can visit his website or see a full collection of his videos down below: https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/
Evidence of cov2 immune escape: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/06/30/science.abi7994
Article from 2015 that explains how imperfect vaccination (like the Pfizer and moderna that require at least two shots to be effective) can create immune escape variants: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198
Article from 2021 explains that unless vaccination is done quickly, there will be a high probability of escape mutants: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95025-3
CDC warns COVID-19 may be a few mutations away from evading vaccines. The virus isn't mutating to avoid the vaccines because of unvaccinated people, it's because the vaccines are putting evolutionary pressure on the virus: https://nypost.com/2021/07/27/cdc-covid-19-may-be-a-few-mutations-away-from-evading-vaccines/
3. Antibody Dependent Enhancement
There is a potential for ADE, antibody dependent enhancement. This is when the virus mutates so that the antibodies no longer neutralize the virus but the antibodies still try to attach to it. This can actually help the virus get into your immune cells because when the virus is covered with antibodies it will draw macrophages to the virus that will try to eat it. However, when your macrophages come to eat the virus particle that they think has been neutralized, the virus gets inside them and starts replicating because the antibodies actually didn't neutralize the virus. Your own antibodies act like a kind of Trojan Horse. Another way that ADE can happen is your own antibodies connect to the receptors of your cells and actually help the virus get in directly. This was a huge problem with the Dengue vaccine and we need to do a lot of testing to make sure this isn't a possibility. Clearly with these rushed vaccines we haven't eliminated this possibility and with the virus mutating, ADE may pop up with a later variant. We must stay vigilant and keep an eye out for this signal. It will manifest as people with high antibody levels being more likely to get sick and die.
Journal article from 2005 shows evidence that sars-cov1 vaccine, that also focused on the spike protein, caused ADE when subjects were challenged with different strain: https://www.nature.com/articles/news050110-3#ref-CR1
Article explaining how ADE works in Sar-cov1: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2538-8
Article explaining the potential for ADE in Covid19: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2538-8
Another article that speculates on the potential for ADE in Covid19: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32920233/
Article explaining the potential risks of ADE in Sar-cov2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7943455/
Article from 2021 explains that there is evidence that covid19 is able to kill macrophages by using antibody dependent mechanisms: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.22.432407v1
Paper explains that the delta variant is extremely close to developing the ADE, only a few mutations will allow it to use our own antibodies to enter our cells: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.22.457114v1
4. The Potential for Autoimmune Disorders
There is a potential for an autoimmune response from the vaccines. The vaccines that were developed for Sars-Cov-1 used the spike protein, just like the vaccines for Sars-Cov-2. Unfortunately, the old vaccines caused the animals to develop serious autoimmune disorders and causing severe organ damage. There is a question about whether these new vaccines, which also focus on the spike protein, will also cause autoimmune disorders. Since both the old vaccines and the new vaccines utilize the spike protein to elicit an immune response, there is a danger that the new vaccines will have the same issues. The problem is that autoimmune disorders take a long time to develop and to be detectable. It may take a long time before doctors and scientists can link the sudden rise in certain kinds of autoimmune disorders with these vaccines. Usually, in a vaccine trial you closely monitor your trial group for years and years. This allows you to identify the signals. With the current program of injecting millions of people, there will be no clear way to link causation to the vaccines and an increase in autoimmune disorders may just fly under the radar. We may not know for a very long time or we may never know. Another concern is that because of the way the mRNA vaccines work, they cause your own cells to present as foreign entities. Your immune system comes over and starts killing your own cells. This has never been done before in human history. We have no idea if there will be long term consequences for teaching your immune system to treat its own cells as foreign material. We will have to wait and see whether this will lead to autoimmune disorders. This means that caution, at the very least, is justified and rational.
Journal article from 2004 on autoimmune disorders from Sars-cov1 vaccine that also focused on the spike protein: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2004/12/sars-vaccine-linked-liver-damage-ferret-study
Journal article from 2005 on autoimmune disorders from Sars-cov1 vaccine that also focused on the spike protein: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15755610/
Journal article from 2012 on autoimmune disorders from Sars-cov1 vaccine that also focused on the spike protein: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0035421
Journal article from 2020 on autoimmune disorders from Sars-cov vaccine (can't figure out if they're talking about cov1 or 2): https://jvi.asm.org/content/78/22/12672.abstract
Journal article from 2020 explains why immune disorders happen with covid vax, because human and Covid19 proteins are similar: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589909020300186
5. The Narrow Design Focus of the Vaccines and Lack of Efficacy
The mRNA vaccines are narrowly focused on just the spike protein when they could have been designed to target more proteins. The Covid19 coronavirus has 4 main proteins. There are 3 on its outside and 1 on the inside. The S-protein, the M-protein, and the E-protein, are on the outside, while the N-protein is on the inside. When you get a natural infection your body will likely produce antibodies for all or most of these proteins (depending on the function of your own unique immune system). We knew from studying Sars-Cov-1 that antibodies to the S-protein and the M-protein are both neutralizing. In fact, they used exactly that knowledge when they designed the current vaccines. So, they could have tried to make vaccines that utilize the M-protein to avoid the potential for autoimmune disorders discussed above. But they didn't, they instead focused only on the S-protein. They could have designed the vaccines so that they present both the S-protein and the M-protein. This would have made the vaccines much more effective and less leaky since any mutated virus particles would have to have mutated both the S-protein and the M-protein to avoid the antibodies. Whereas, the current vaccines are narrowly focused on just the S-protein, meaning that the virus only has to mutate the one protein. It is exponentially harder for an organism to mutate two beneficial traits vs just mutating one beneficial trait. So, these vaccines are worse than they could have been. We are seeing the results of these mediocre medications in the data coming from highly vaccinated countries.
Article explains how vaccine manufacturers have used relative risk reduction to determine that vaccine efficacy is ~90+%, however they should have used absolute risk reduction which would tell us that the vaccines will only reduce total covid cases by ~1%: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(21)00069-0/fulltext
Addendum to the above information. This video from 2013 explains the difference between relative and absolute risk reduction in a very simple way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K30MGvOs5s&ab_channel=TerryShaneyfelt
Article from 2005 explains that antibodies to the S-protein and the M-protein are effective in neutralizing the sars-cov1 virus. However, the sars-cov2 vaccines only target the S-protein. This is evidence that the vaccine manufacturers could have chosen to make a superior mrna vax that produced two types of antibodies, but chose to focus narrowly on just the S-protein: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16544518/
Antibodies from vaccines start to drop within 6 months, get ready for endless boosters: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03777-9
Iceland covid data shows majority of covid cases are fully vaccinated: https://www.covid.is/data
UK data for August 2021 shows 183,000 unvaccinated cases with 390 deaths, and 73,000 vaccinated cases but with 679 deaths. So, it seems that getting vaccinated reduces your chances of getting covid, but increases your chances of dying from it if you do get it: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1012644/Technical_Briefing_21.pdf
Vaccinated healthcare works who experienced a vaccine failure still had huge viral loads: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3897733
Pfizer intentionally destroyed the control groups in their trials for the covid vaccine, which means we'll never know how effective the vaccine actually is: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/19/969143015/long-term-studies-of-covid-19-vaccines-hurt-by-placebo-recipients-getting-immuni
Moderna has never been able to get a drug or vaccine approved by the FDA, they were chosen by Trump because the CEO said they could get their experimental gene therapy vaccine made in the fastest time, no animal trials were done: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/01/us/coronavirus-moderna-vaccine-invs/index.html
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel explains that they designed the vaccine in just two days: https://v.redd.it/p83r1m7zzgd71
Even CNN agrees the rushed vaccine is a stupid idea (but only while Trump was president): https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/01/health/eua-coronavirus-vaccine-history/index.html
6. There are Alternatives to Vaccination
There are alternative treatments that are effective against Covid19 but they are being suppressed. Why? Because the vaccines are not approved by the FDA but instead they are emergency use authorized only. The emergency use authorization can only be granted if "there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives". Well, a growing body of scientific research is showing that both Ivermectin and Fluvoxamine (among other drugs) are adequate alternatives for early treatment of Covid19, and both of these drugs have been FDA approved for years. Unfortunately, that means they are now off patent and no one can make any money off of them. So, for the vaccines to continue to receive their EUA, the existence of these treatments must be suppressed. We have seen a huge amount of censorship of doctors who have been speaking out about these drugs.
Ivermectin
Emergency use authorization for the vaccines cannot be granted if there are effective alternative approved treatments for Covid19. So, if the pharmaceutical industry is going to make any money off covid, they must suppress the existence of any existing off patent drugs that may be effective in treating or preventing covid: https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/mcm-legal-regulatory-and-policy-framework/emergency-use-authorization
Meta-analysis on the efficacy of Ivermectin in treating Covid19: https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Abstract/9000/Ivermectin_for_Prevention_and_Treatment_of.98040.aspx
A double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial shows that Ivermectin is able to significantly reduce viral load within 6 days for most people: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.31.21258081v1
More evidence that Ivermectin treatment leads to much faster recovery from Covid19: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.26880
A study reveals that a five-day course of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 may reduce the duration of illness: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33278625/
Ivermectin stops replication of covid: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220302011
Ivermectin has anti-viral properties: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3888155/
Ivermectin has anti-viral properties against covid: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-020-0336-
Ivermectin binds to Covid19 proteins to block the virus: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7996102/
Evidence that Ivermectin can be effective as a prophylaxis, Argentinian frontline healthcare workers were given Ivermectin as a preventative and zero got sick with covid, whereas 58.2% of the control group who did not take Ivermectin got covid: https://www.buongiornosuedtirol.it/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Nota-Journal-of-Biomedical-Research-Safety-and-Efficacy-Iota-Carrageenan-and-Ivermectin.pdf
Ivermectin safe to give 12mg per day for 5 days: https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712%2820%2932506-6/fulltext
Ivermectin safely administered 60mg per day for 6 months: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10428194.2020.1786559
Fluvoxamine
Fluvoxamine helps in covid treatment: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33180097/
Covid leads to long term inflammation, useful for long haul Covid19 treatment: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33391730/
Fluvoxamine has anti-inflammatory properties that can help treat covid: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2021.652688/full
Fluvoxamine targets sigma-1 to stop covid replication: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33403480/
7. They are Pushing the Vaccine on People Who Clearly Don't Need It
We've known for decades that once you are infected with a virus or disease, your body creates a robust immune response, including memory T cells and B cells. These cells stick around so that you can quickly respond to a new infection. However, this fact is being completely ignored by vaccine pushers. They want a needle in every arm, even in the arms of those who do not need it, like the covid recovered. We might say, well covid is new and different, and perhaps immunity wanes after a time. This assumption was prudent in the beginning of the pandemic but now we have lots of evidence that the covid recovered have a near zero chance of getting sick again. Your body takes a few weeks and months to build up its antibodies after an infection. During this time your body is susceptible to a second infection. Most of the time when a second infection takes place, it occurs during this time of antibody build-up. There is no reason to force every covid recovered patient to take an invasive experimental drug, especially after that initial 3 month period after they have built up a sufficient immune response. If you still think that the miniscule chance that their immune system has failed makes them a danger, then why are these people not asked for proof of antibodies? It's because they don't actually care if you have antibodies. The vaccinated, without knowing whether they have antibodies or not, can walk around freely touching vegetables and sharing drinks, but a covid recovered patient, with proof of antibodies is still considered a biohazard. This is backass wards and it is evidence that vax pushers don't actually care about immunity. It is just about getting a needle into every arm. The reason why they are doing this, I do not know. I leave it up to you to speculate. But it doesn't make sense and I make a point of not going along with things that don't make sense.
No benefit from vaccination for previously infected individuals: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v2
Covid19 infection produces long lasting immunity: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4
Second article that covid19 infection produces life long immunity: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9
More evidence that covid19 infection produces long term immunity: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.19.21255739v1
Study of 600,000 covid recovered patients finds less than 1% reinfection rate over 10 months and an almost 0% risk in the first 7 months: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8209951/pdf/RMV-9999-e2260.pdf
8. The Growing Evidence of Adverse Reactions to the Vaccines and the Censorship of this Evidence
There is a growing amount of data that people are having severe reactions to the vaccines. It gets little to no coverage in the press, in some cases people who talk about their reactions on social media are being censored and called anti-vaxxers (I mean, how asinine to call someone who took the jab an anti-vaxxer) or fakers (I am sure some are faking for money/attention, but I highly doubt it's many of them given the social consequences for lying). Some senators have done press conferences with these vaccine harmed people so they can tell their stories. Some doctors have spoke out, although many are being censored and threatened with losing their licenses. Some internet platforms are still allowing people to tell their stories. But many communities are being deleted or shutdown. I remember when journalists, data scientists, and doctors were sounding the alarm on covid in January 2020 while all the authorites and big shot scientists were saying "no, no, everything is fine, it's just the flu bro, go hug a Chinese person, or are you a racist". What if those people had been censored then? Many of the same people who alerted us to covid are sounding the alarm on these vaccines now. We were lucky then that they were not censored. We are lucky now that there are publicly accessible government databases which contain reports of people who have had adverse reactions to the vaccines. These systems were put in place in the 90's to act as an early warning system and to give transparency to the public after previous botched vaccine rollouts, like the 1976 swine flu vaccine debacle. You can go and read these reports of adverse reactions to the vaccines for yourself. There are websites that download the reports and present them to the public in a very readable manner (the government website from the 90's is not very good). There are concerns that these reports are being made in error or by bad actors. However, research has been done into these systems and it was found that 86% of the adverse reactions had seemingly no other cause or explanation aside from the covid vaccine. In the past, if a vaccine hit 50 deaths or a few hundred adverse reactions on these reporting systems, they would shutdown the vaccination program. As of writing this, for the covid vaccines, the deaths in the US are above ten thousand and the serious adverse reactions are into the hundreds of thousands. Yet they just keep rolling with the shots and are even forcibly mandating them.
Analysis on the VAERS death data shows that in 86% of reports the vaccine cannot be ruled out as a causal factor in the death of the patient: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352837543_Analysis_of_COVID-19_vaccine_death_reports_from_the_Vaccine_Adverse_Events_Reporting_System_VAERS_Database_Interim_Results_and_Analysis
Addendum to the above link. OpenVAERS is a site that allows you to easily read VAERS reports and breaks down the numbers. The reports seem to be a lot of people who have comorbidities or are old, but there are also some really eye opening cases where young people experience horrible side effects. Read for yourself and make up your own mind about what the vax is doing to your fellow Americans: https://www.openvaers.com/openvaers
9 & 10 Continued in the Comments

As this is a language of tastes and strands of DNA analog names cannot be written phonetically and are instead replaced with a human name or Earth analog in [brackets].
Span: The diameter of an average [Gaian] = 0.94mm, Kilospan = 0.94m.
Beat: The amount of time takes an average [Gaian] to move their cilia = 0.064s, kilobeat = 1min 4s
Work Cycle: 10 kilobeats. Equivalent to around 15 hours on their time scale
Day: Day length on [Gaia] = 28h 16min. Equivalent to around 3 months on their time scale.
Year: Year length on [Gaia] = 224.4 days = 264.3 Earth days.
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Alison was removing her report from the scanner when the intern looked up from reading a new message on his screen. “Oh, there is some news you need to hear. The linguists and interrogators have arrived and are being processed at the front desk at the moment, they should be meeting with you shortly. They are also insisting on some security changes.” He paused to type on his keyboard for a second and the scanner began printing a checklist, Alison glanced at it worriedly while the intern returned to skimming the document on his screen. “Ok, some extra guards will be arriving soon and the NSA is insisting the lab with the aliens will need to follow biosafety level 3 protocols. Some guys from the biohazard wing are coming by to give you guys a proper hermetically sealed tank with a filtered air supply to keep the wasps in. They are also going to move that food sample you took to one of their labs.” He said, glancing back up at Alison.
Oh great. That won’t be a test of trust at all Alison thought as she imagined trying to wrangle the wasps into a new cage. Security was probably going to insist on clamping their wings again for that.
She sighed and picked up the fresh printout. “What’s the eta on the new tank?”
Some scrolling and clicking later “Hmm, 10 to 15 minutes. They say they had a wheeled one in storage that they are about to send over.”
“That’s quick at least, I’ll go tell the others to get ready for them. Bye.” She said briskly as she rushed back to the lab and brought the others up to speed. Carl was a bit annoyed about having his sample taken away.
“Really? They are worried about diseases from these guys? They are aliens. That’s worse than worrying about a pine tree catching a cold, at least a pine tree still uses the same biochemistry. These guys don’t even use DNA.” Carl grumbled as he packed his equipment and the sample back up.
“Look, I know it’s unlikely but you know how paranoid people are about this sort of thing, NASA kept the Apollo 11 guys in quarantine for over three weeks just in case there were deadly diseases on the Moon.” Alison grumped back. “Anyway, I need to go tell our guests that their cage is going to be changing soon. I hope they add that water tank we asked for, that might sweeten the deal.” She said over her shoulder as she walked over to the Faraday cage.
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[Walter] was feeling a bit better by now, the giant had been gone for a bit over a cycle and the lack of constant watching had finally let him relax enough that he was willing to shift his focus inwards and fix his broken mind. [Eve] had restored some function to his signaling pathways but she was no surgeon and they were still in pretty rough shape. They were beginning to heal on their own, but it was far too slow.
He knew he had been procrastinating these last few cycles, he really wasn’t keen on messing with his mind weaving equipment again after that last disaster. It was a silly fear, he had worked with those tools for decadays, they were the foundation of his work as an operator, but that almost made the fear worse in a way. That even a trusted tool could kill you if you made a slight mistake. Regardless, he couldn’t keep making up excuses for pushing it off, not if he wanted to control his body well enough to be able to escape if it came to that. At the moment he was pretty sure he couldn’t fly. He glanced around the cage and the room beyond one last time before disconnecting from his craft and turning his attention inwards.
There was the brief bought of disorientation that always comes when swapping between different senses. The arms and tendrils that wove out from the main control center of the weaving equipment were coated in taste and touch sensors, and sensors in each joint fed him a constant sense of each limb’s location. The hundreds of such limbs sprawled about throughout his body flooded him with a torrent of sensory input that was briefly overwhelming. Bringing a few minor thought centers to bear on the data pouring in the noise gradually became understandable and he cautiously sent a few dozen tendrils to examine several of his major motor signaling pathways.
As he felt around he found many treads were still loose, the protein walkways trailing off to nowhere. He could taste memory snippets and pheromone signals piling up along them or falling off into the surrounding fluid, the walker proteins in the water spasming as they blindly repeated their walking cycle with nothing to grab onto. [Walter] [sighed].
About as bad as I thought. Feels like a bit over half of the fibers are still cut. Well, no more putting it off, better get to work.
[Walter] began the slow process of identifying each snipped end and linking them back up to their proper counterpart, triggering ribosomes to manufacture extra cabling to fill in gaps where they didn’t break cleanly. Several kilobeats drifted by as he was lost in the work.
I should really add in some redundant lines and put some safe guards on this thing, I don’t want another situation like that being possible He thought to himself as he finished up the last touches on his 8th motor group. He started planning some upgrades and rereading the mindweaver’s control center programing manual when a signal packet with [Eve]’s scent came in.
“Hey [Walter], you should wake up, [Alison] is back and has some news for us.”
[Walter] grumbled internally for a moment before stowing his equipment, properly this time, and disconnecting. With a jerk his normal senses returned to him and he fiddled with his craft’s comm.
“OK, booting back up now.” He replied, before linking with his craft again. Almost immediately he could feel the improvement, his motor functions weren’t twitching out like crazy in his real body or in the link anymore. Looking around with his craft’s eyes he watched his front legs draw perfect circles in the air with relief.
“You made some progress I take it?” [Frank] asked looking over at him.
“Yeah, I’m mostly back together now. There are still a few more final touchups before I’m 100 percent again, but that should only take a few more kilobeats of work.” [Walter] said, lowering his legs back down and turning to look at the source of his interruption. The colony was standing over their cage again and was looking at a large flexible sheet of white material clutched in one of its grasping limbs.
“What was the news you were talking about [Eve]?” [Walter] asked, turning his attention a bit lower to the craft standing at the front of the cage. [Eve] turned and waved an antenna at him. “Yeah, sorry about interrupting you [Walter], just figured you should know the colonies have decided to move us to a more sealed cage, their leaders are apparently paranoid about diseases. We told them that we don’t have any pathogens in us and none of them could affect them anyway, but apparently they don’t trust us enough to take our word on that.”
“Fair enough.” [Walter] muttered. “I wouldn’t trust them that much either. Though that does make any hope of escape slimmer.”
[Eve] sent a signal of indifference. “Any escape plan would have to involve our craft if we want to survive more than a tenthday and we’d need more than a slight gap in a hatch to get these things out. We already can’t break out of this chamber, another slightly tougher one won’t make a difference. Our best chance to escape would be while they are moving us.”
“Should we make a break for it though?” [Frank] interjected. “They haven’t contacted our ship yet so no one is coming to pick us up yet. We might be able to cobble together a radio powerful enough to reach them, but that’s a really big if depending on where we are. And also let’s not forget the fact we would have to fight our way out of this massive complex with our stingers sealed. That would be suicide.”
“I wasn’t saying we should try and escape now, just that moving between cages is pretty much the only time when that’s an option. Hopefully it will happen again after the ship has been called, or maybe we will get moved to a different facility and can escape while we are outside. But yeah, escaping now would just be dumb, and it could ruin any chances that they might willingly let us go.”
[Walter] thought about interjecting for a moment but decided they had a point and let the matter drop. This new cage story might be a way to trick them into transferring them into testing machines again, but flying away was a dream at this point. He [sighed] and let that dream die.
“OK, we’ll continue playing along for now. When are they going to take us? Are they going to use those blasted clamps again?” He asked, turning to look at the 6 pedestals lined up by the large glass door at the front of the cage, the impassive array of metal limbs and serrated maws atop each glinting in the lamplight.
“I fucking hope not.” Muttered [Eve].
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Alison glanced away from the check list she was rereading as the radio hissed to life.
Hmm, they took a few seconds this time. That’s a bit longer than usual.
“Transfer. When. How.” The radio asked.
“In around 5 minutes.” She said, glancing at a clock. “Oh, that’s one part in 60 of an hour. I don’t know how you will be transferred, that’s probably up to the people setting up the new tank. They might use the clamps again or transfer you in a sealed box. They don’t want you contaminating the air.”
“No. Want. Clamps.”
Alison grimaced. “Understandable, sorry about that. Though it would be a good chance for me to add some marking on you.”
“…Why” The radio hissed after a moment.
“Ah, because I have trouble telling you apart.” Alison said slightly embarrassedly. “You also all use the same voice so it’s hard to know who’s speaking. I assume it’s you up front?” She asked, pointing at the wasp up at the front with its antenna on the glass.
“Yes.” The radio hissed. “Try. Fix. Sound.”
“What do you mea-“ Alison paused as the radio began talking with its voice clips shifted into a higher pitch.
“Different. Speaker.” It squeaked.
Alison managed to keep a straight face and replied. “That helps a bit, but telling 8 different pitches apart, especially given the range of voices you guys use for each sound clip, would be pretty hard. How about you send on different radio frequencies and I’ll set up a display to show whose talking.”
“Yes.”
Alison spent a few moments plugging a tablet into the radio and setting up an audio app to display eight different channels. “Ok, I have this set up, send me the different frequencies you’re going to use and identify yourselves.”
A few seconds of pings followed by legs being raised and she had each one of the bugs set up with a number. Let’s hope I don’t lose track of which is which. She thought as she turned her attention to number 1 at the front of the cage. “Ok, this is working now. This will defiantly help the linguists too. We should get some more radios and let you have multiple conversations going.” She said, adding a note to her next report.
A knock on the door signaled the arrival of the biohazard team. They wheeled in a slightly larger tank with a large box with vents protruding from one side. One of the heavily garbed workers stepped forwards and addressed the collected scientists.
“You will need to undergo decontamination procedures and don proper PPE before you can continue working. We have set up a chemical shower down the hall and a changing station for your equipment. As you have already been exposed we will be monitoring you for any signs of infection, and you will be quarantined to this lab and several sealed off rooms we have been setting up in this wing. The linguists and interrogators from the NSA will be arriving shortly, as you are possibly infected you will make no contact with them. We will be handling any biohazardous materials.”
“How will you be handling the aliens?” Asked Alison.
“We will be transferring them in this case.” The technician said, gesturing to a small box that could fit in one of the tank’s airlocks. “Will they cooperate?” He asked.
“I will ask them to, but that’s all I can really say on the matter.” Alison said cautiously. She turned back to the cage on the desk. “These people will be transferring you in a box now, no clamps. They are going to be putting you in that bigger box there. Will you get in when they tell you?”
“Yes.”
Alison turned to the technician and shrugged. “They have been mostly honest so far but have admitted that they know what lying is. They aren’t openly hostile to the idea at least.”
“Alright, we will handle things from here. You all need to go begin decontaminating.”
The scientists sighed slightly and filed out to the shower. After changing into back-tying gowns, masks and face shields they were given a quick test of their vitals and begrudgingly allowed to get back to work.
“It could be worse.” David grumbled as he fiddled with his gown. “They could have declared BSL-4 and required we all wear positive pressure suits.”
“I just hope they didn’t traumatize any of them.” Deborah muttered as they pushed open the lab door and checked on the wasps.
——————————————————————
[Frank] watched these new colonies warily as they began setting up the room they just wheeled in. They looked odd and mishappened at first until he realized they were wearing some sort of full body covering. One of them stood up clutching a smaller room with one hand, if by small you meant several stories high, but that was practically normal at this point. He guessed this was the box the colonies had been talking about a few kilobeats ago. The creature slowly lumbered past their cage to the huge door on the wall a few kilospan away. Some creaks and groans could be heard as the being shuffled around in whatever chamber was back there before one of the hatches on the back wall clicked open and the box it had been holding slid out, its door ajar. One of the other creatures stood nearby looking in at them and said “Enter” “Bring” “Tool”, pointing at their communication device. [Frank] looked at it curiously. “We can’t lift that.” He replied.
“No” “Small” “You” “Tool”
“Oh, the interface tool, yeah we’ll bring it.”
[Frank] looked around at what was left of their team and sent. “Ok people, let’s get this over with.” He flew over to the new chamber and walked inside cautiously, seeing and smelling nothing amiss. It was just a smaller plastic room. He relaxed slightly and called the others in after him. A few beats later the rest of the group flew in and waited. The creature watching them made a sound and the hatch to the airlock the box was in slid closed. Another hatch behind them opened a sliver and a whirring was heard as the door on their box slid shut. Once their box was sealed the hatch behind them opened up all the way and they could see the colony from before putting away a device on its belt. Massive limbs reached out and picked up their box, with both hands this time, and the creature slowly carried them out into the main room. It seemed to be trying to keep them steady, there was only a slow rocking where it failed to perfectly compensate for its gait.
A few dozen beats later and they were set down in front of the door to the larger cage, much to [Walter]’s relief. The creatures rather unceremoniously slid them inside and shut the door, before fiddling with several devices, flicking beams of light over them, the new cage and the colony which carried them. At last they seemed to be satisfied and one of them flicked a device and their box’s door opened again.
This cage isn’t comm shielded then. That’s useful to know. [Frank] thought as he carefully crawled out. After a slightly longer check of this new space he found little of note. It was a mostly empty reinforced glass box with some fans behind a secure vent whirring in a high corner. He wondered if their request for a water tank had fallen through. There was one other thing in the box with them though, a larger communications device connected to a black box. “What is that?” He asked one of the creatures watching them. They didn’t respond and he realized the radio hadn’t sounded, they were several kilospans away from it now. He grumbled for a bit as the creatures began washing things down instead of setting the radio back up. After a few hundred beats of waving at them fruitlessly he gave up and went back to the smaller box with the others. He was pretty sure the strange black cube wasn’t anything dangerous but there was no reason to test that.
After heading back in he found the fabricator pair had passed the time making some paints from plastic chips they had squired away. “What’s that for?” He sent curiously as he watched them pour out some of the thick grey liquid into a bowl. “It’s body paint so that the humans can tell us apart better.” One of them said. “We can write the numbers our comms are using on our backs.”
“Hmm, I’m not sure if their sight is good enough to distinguish symbols that small from a kilospan away.” [Frank] mused. “You saw how big the symbols on their screens are and they hold those half a kilospan away from their heads’ at most.”
The pair deflated slightly before one perked up “We could do colors instead, that should be clearer than trying to tell apart different squiggles.”
[Frank] sent a signal of cautious acceptance. “If you can make some safe dyes with the chemicals you have on hand you can try. [Alison] seemed to find telling us apart important, it might help them relate to us more.”
“Or they just want to keep track of us better.” [Erin] sent.
[Frank] [shrugged] “Or that. I still think it’s worth it.”
He glanced around at the others who sent signals of acceptance or indifference. A kilobeat latter the fabricators had settled on several dyes that worked in the human color range and made a few different mixes. Each team member soon had a bold stripe running down their crafts abdomen and a splotch on their thorax and head. [Frank] glanced up at the colonies again and saw they were still cleaning. He [sighed] and prepared himself for another long wait.
After a cycle or so of boredom their familiar creatures finally lumbered back in. They were a bit hard to recognize at first due to changing their outer covering and partly obscuring their heads with protective gear but that group of heights, eyes and head filaments was somewhat recognizable.
Oh thank the depths. Maybe now we will get the radio working again.
——————————————————————
Alison scanned the room and saw the new tank up against one of the tables in the middle of the lab.
“How was the transfer?” she asked as she and Deborah walked over. The creatures remined silent which was odd, but one of them flew up and began gesturing at the far end of the room.
Wait, why is it covered in paint? Alison thought before turning to look at where it was pointing.
Oh, they left the radio over there, that was dumb.
Alison walked over to the old cage and grabbed the radio set. “Hey, when did you paint the wasps? I thought you were only going to move them while we were gone?” She asked annoyed to one of the hazmat suited technicians working nearby. He didn’t look up from the door knob he was scrubbing. “We didn’t do that. It just showed up on them after a few minutes, figured they made it themselves somehow. We would like a sample of it soon for safety testing.”
“Oh. That’s interesting. I’ll go ask them about it.”
She finished moving the radio equipment and tablet to the new desk and turned it on.
“Word. Yes.” It said immediately. She glanced at the tablet and say it was number 1 speaking as usual. She smiled slightly, “You missed being able to talk huh?”
“Yes. Boredom. Speak. Work. Help. Return. Vessel.”
“Yes, if you help we might get you to your ship. We have made some progress on that, we have found one of your ships. We will contact them soon, our decision makers really want to talk to them.” Alison said as she got the tablet’s stand propped up.
“Good. When.”
“As soon as some translators arrive and give you more words so you tell them a bit more about what those ships’ reaction might be.”
“Understood.”
Alison glanced around at the wasps cluster around the little transport box, noting the odd shades of color they had dabbed on themselves. “Did you add the colors?”
“Yes. Help. Distinguish.”
Alison grinned “That’s great. Where did you get them?”
“Made.” A purple striped drone said, holding up a chip of phone casing.
Note to self, they have advanced chemical plants in those things. Alison thought uneasily.
She spent a few moments relabeling their radio channel names with their colors as the linguists arrived.
——————————————————————
Clark had been waiting in the lobby for 20 minutes now and was struggling to contain his impatience. Real aliens, I’m about to talk to real fucking aliens. He thought with a mix of giddy excitement and disbelief. He glanced annoyedly at the other two agents who had been driven here with him, Hank and Michel he was pretty sure. They were looking of into the distance with rather stonier expressions. They are probably just looking at this as a security threat. Which, I mean, it is. They were spying on us for days, that’s not a great sign. But come on people, we just answered the greatest question in astronomy, have a bit of wonder in your lives. He composed himself as the guard standing at the lobby door checked his ear piece and headed over to them. Clark stood up out of the surprisingly uncomfortable chair he had been sitting in with relief as the guard gestured for them to follow.
Several locked doors and an elevator ride down into the Earth later and they arrived at the wing of the lab where the aliens were being held. The hallway leading up to it was filled white plastic sheets, pumps, plastic tubing, and the harsh smell of cleaning chemicals. “This facility was chosen due to this section being equipped to study electronic warfare equipment.” Their terse guide informed them as they reached the end of the hall and he pointed at the pair of wire laced doors set there. “Each lab room in this wing are Faraday shielded and have their own air gapped servers to prevent any damage to the rest of the facility. You will be provided with digital and analog recording equipment inside the lab, and you will be permitted access to its server, but you are not allowed to bring any digital equipment or recordings out. The only communication with the rest of the lab is carried through these doors as heavily proofread physical printouts or word of mouth. Am I understood?”
Clark and the two other NSA agents nodded; he had been preparing for something like this. “Any external communications will be conveyed to you via a messenger” The guard continued, pointing at a thin man sitting at a desk nearby. The messenger gave them a half-hearted wave and the guard turned back to the group. “In addition to the data security of this room we are modifying it to be compliant with biosafety level 3 protocols due to the discovery that the subjects are alien lifeforms. Disease compatibility is unknown at this time. A changing booth has been set up down that hall for you to put on the required protective equipment.”
Several minutes of instruction and suiting up followed as the four of them put on their garb and recording equipment. Their guide then lead them back to the signal lock into the lab, and Clark could see more hasty modifications present in it as the small room had been partly filled with a chemical shower. The inner door was covered by a clear plastic sheet that was tapped securely to the doorframe, looking through it he could see basically what he had been expecting, a large white room with work stations and banks of equipment lining the walls and several steel tables arrayed in the center.
The guard walked up and rapped on the glass door through the sheet and a man in hazmat gear opened it, giving them a clearer view. The guard pointed to a group of less heavily suited up scientists. “This is the team that has been dealing with these creatures so far. As they have already potentially been exposed, so you will not enter the room and will observe through this sheeting. Do not open the outer door to this room unless someone in the lab has shut the inner door to maintain data security. You may introduce yourselves.” Their guide finished and stepped back to let the interrogators peer in.
Clark tried to pay attention as the 6 scientists exchanged pleasantries but his attention was grabbed by the cage one of the hazmat suited technicians were rolling over to them, a cage with several wasps in it.
“Those are the creatures alright.” Said a short brown-haired scientist who noticed his shift in focus, he was pretty sure she said her name was Alison. “You’re the linguist then?” She asked.
“Um, yeah.” He said, pulling his eyes away. Michel and Hank must have just finished introducing themselves. He thought, glancing at the two other agents. He cleared his throat. “Yes, I specialize in translating languages and code phrases. I understand these creatures have a limited grasp of spoken English correct?”
“Correct.” A radio hissed.
He whipped his head down and saw one of the bugs in the cage was looking up at him. It had a garish shade of green paint spread on its head and back. “Er, hello.” Clark said, crouching down so they were closer to eye level. “How many words do you currently know?”
“Not. Know. Number. Sound. Know. Number. Picture.” The radio said in a strange broken cadence. The creature then turned to look at Alison and gestured at the tablet and battery bank in its enclosure. “What. Box.” It asked.
“The box next to the tablet? That’s a battery pack.” Alison replied
“Word. Battery.”
“A type of power storage.”
——————————————————————
[Eve] stepped back a bit when she heard that and checked her radiation sensor. Nothing unusual. Ok, it’s not one of their more insane types of power source at least.
“What type of power” She asked. She waited for a few hundred beats as the creature above slowly drawled out “Chemical” “Similar” “Communication” “Machine”
She glanced towards [Frank] who [shrugged]. “Sounds like they’re saying it’s a bigger version of their comm unit power sources. Those are somewhat primitive chemical batteries; they are flammable but otherwise pretty safe.”
“All right, if your sure its not going to bust into flames I guess we can turn that bigger device on then. Hopefully it works similarly.”
——————————————————————
Clark watched as the wasps flew over to the tablet and flicked it on. It was already set up and had a drawing app on the home screen.
“Someone suggested a bigger screen and some better apps would be useful.” Said one of the technicians when Alison gave him a questioning look.
After a few moments of clicking around the wasps seemed to get a hang of the larger interface and began writing out a number. “1506 words. Not terrible, not fluent either. OK, I am going to do some relevant vocabulary tests, Mr. Michel Anderson here is going to ask you some of the questions that we are thinking of sending to your ship, answer any of them that you can and tell me which words in them you don’t know.” Clark said as the other agent began pulling out files from his briefcase.
Several minutes of questioning followed, until the green painted alien up front waved several legs at them and said “Slow. Much. More. Talk.”
“You want to us to go much slower?” Clark clarified.
“No. Too. Slow. More. Others. Talk.”
“I think they want to speed things up with multiple conversations.” Alison said.
“Yes. You. Much. Slow. Think.”
“Are they saying we’re stupid or that we’re literally slower?” Michel asked annoyed.
“Slower. Think.”
A pair of wasps grabbed their little stylus again and wrote a 90. “Amount. Slow. Think.” The radio hissed.
Clark’s eyes went wide and he looked at Alison who seemed only a bit surprised. “I figured they were a bit faster than us due to how quickly they responded all the time, but 90-fold is pretty crazy. No wonder they always seemed ADHD. We must be driving you mad with boredom.” She said.
“Yes.” The radio replied.
The NSA agents looked at each other with a rather different concern at the front of their minds. That means they have a massive tactical advantage over us, any fight we have with them they could out maneuver us with ease. And the spying, they have been studying us for a bit over a week at least, that’s multiple years to them. They must know far more about us than we imagined. Clark thought with mounting panic. Our timeline is going to need to be sped way up for this.
He looked at the green bug again “Can your translator understand sped up speech?”
“Yes.”
He turned to the guard by the door. “Get as many people as you can reading this stuff into a microphone and get us a fast audio player.” He said, handing him most of the pile of papers they had prepared. “Also, please for the love of God get us permission to break this signal containment policy. We won’t be able to cram enough people in here to answer their questions in real time, letting people talk to them remotely would speed things up massively. The ships above might come to some decision about us far faster than we thought, we need to start communicating with them today.”
The guard grimaced “I’ll see what I can do.” He said before rushing out the door, papers in hand. Clark tapped his foot impatiently while the technician inside the lab closed the inner door briefly while the guard left, painfully aware that each passing second was a minute and a half to the beings he was trying to communicate with.
What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?
——————————————————————
Director Townsend finished another call with the FBI and sighed as he looked at his freshly filled inbox. At the top was an urgent message from the interrogation team which he clicked open immediately. He reread it twice, paused, and began cursing under his breath. He then made another phone call.
“Yes, this is Townsend again. We have another development. Apparently, these creatures think around 90 times faster than we do. Yes, my response exactly. I am adjusting this lab’s data security policy in light of this, I want an encrypted line of communication to as many trusted linguists as you can get your hands on. This job just got 90 times harder.”
——————————————————————
[Frank] looked on with relief as the creatures seemed to take the revelation of their slowness seriously and were working on a compromise.
“I still think telling them that was a bad idea, that was one of our biggest hidden advantages.” [Erin] grumbled.
“We have been stuck here for two tenthdays already and have only had like 10 conversations. These things have already found one of our ships, we need to get going faster before either of us do something stupid.” [Eve] replied.
[Erin] grumbled to herself for a few beats but didn’t respond and [Eve] let the matter drop. It was a moot point regardless. The things had spent the last few kilobeats rushing around preparing new equipment. From what they could glean from the scattered words they overheard it seemed their leaders were going to let more linguists talk to them remotely. It would still take them kilobeats to answer any questions they asked but there would be multiple colonies working on different questions at once and playing back their answers at high speed. It would be a pain to keep track of which answer was for which question but even still it would speed things up quite a bit.
One of the new colonies, [Clark] was its sound name [Frank] recalled, was setting up a strange folding comm device with dozens of button on its lower surface. He had been plugging in a box with black foam on one side and was pointing it towards them. After some more slow clicks the box began playing quick bursts of sound at them. “You” “Understood” “This”
[Frank] [grinned]. “Yes” he replied. After a few dozen beats the slow creature clicked another button and a sped up recording of one of the creatures asking questions about the voidships began to play.
Now we are getting somewhere.
——————————————————————
Alison watched the linguists setting up equipment on the other side of the plastic screen with a tinge of annoyance that she wasn’t able to help much. She watched the wasps flick about on their tablet, sketching drawings or numbers to answer questions that just sounded like high pitched chirps to her ears. She was recording and monitoring the radio transmissions from and between the creatures on her laptop, slowing it down to see if she could see anything interesting about their language yet. So far it just looked like noise to her, but she figured it would be useful data for the linguists’ latter if they ever wanted to try and speak alien.
Well, send alien radio at least. We would need a DNA printer to ‘speak’ it.
A few hours later and people were beginning to get tired. She checked the clock and saw it was after 8. Shit, already? I hope we are getting paid over time for this…on second thought I hope overtime is still relevant after this. At some point someone from security signed off on giving the creatures the water tank they had requested and the bugs looked like they were taking shifts in it every ten minutes or so, which made sense, the last few hours had been nearly 2 weeks on their scale.
At last at around a quarter to 9 a slightly clearer voice rang out over the radio. “This is Green. We think we have a close good understanding of the language now. We want to talk to vessel now.”
Alison glanced at Clark through the plastic screen and saw he seemed both pleased and a bit apprehensive. Watching your students learn a language in 2 hours will do that to you I guess.
He spent a few moments checking reports from the other linguists they had been messaging with before nodding. “It seems we have covered all of the critical vocabulary we were suggested to, I will inform our leaders of this immediately.”
——————————————————————
Director Townsend downed his fifth cup of coffee for the night as an urgent message from the translation team popped up again. It was good news this time thank goodness. He picked his phone back up and made the big call.
“Townsend again, the translators have just finished and are giving a go ahead on contact. Yes sir. Has the UN made their decision about it yet sir? Yeah that sounds like them alright, but we are still going ahead with it I expect? Of course sir.”
He hung up and sat back in his chair with relief, the project was out of his hands now. For better or for worse humanity was about to make second contact.
[Next]

A recent street preacher brought up the topic of whether humans are "just molecules banging around". But he placed the phrase in a syllogism

"IF we are in a world where there is no God, where we're all just molecules banging around, THEN you cannot account for immaterial abstract laws ... "

The street preacher then several times referred to this as a "worldview" as if it were an ideological stance with no basis. Or if it were something that atheists just assume is true to fit with their prepacked worldview.
Whether we are "just molecules banging around" is, pragmatically speaking, a fact in 2019. Redditors should know that this transition from philosophical speculation into fact-status was slow, piecemeal, and occurred in biology entirely after 1940.

Elan Vital and Vitalism

Even atheist extraordinaire, Frederick Nietzsche believed that life existed in the universe on account of some all-pervading vital life force which he called "The Will to Power". Artur Schopenhauer, (practically Nietzsche's predecessor in Germany) also believed in this vital essence, and he dubbed it the Will-to-Live. These philosophers of the Victorian Era were operating under a structure now called German Idealism, whose basic tenets can be traced to Hegel. Hegel's metaphysics demanded that the world is a duality of two primary substances, one part material and one part spirit (Hegel used the German word "geist").
The more diehard fanboys of Nietzsche should know that his belief in a all-pervading elan vital did not make him any less of an atheist, or less of a writer or make him embarrassingly spiritual. In following centuries, historians and scientists called this theory vitalism. It was a perfectly valid scientific theory in the 19th century.
Atoms, molecules and the periodic table of elements were not known to science until the years prior to World War 1. Before that, organic substances produced by the human body were "substances" of whose fundamental constituency was a mystery. A landmark experiment of the 1830s involving urea showed that at least one "organic substance" could be artificially synthesized. This was the first chip in the armor of vitalism.
Today we know how DNA is transcribed in the nucleus into messenger RNA. The RNA strands are spliced, diced, and stitched back together into exons and introns. The finished product leaves the nucleus, where molecular machines called ribosomes translate the RNA strands into proteins. An organelle called the mitochondrion has its own DNA line separate from the human genome, and its information is only passed through the mother. The inner matrix of the mitochondrion sends an electron up a ladder of energy levels in a process called the Electron Transport Chain. The high-energy electrons are used to run molecular "pumps" which phosphorylate ADP into ATP.
Absolutely nothing in the preceding paragraph was known by anyone in 1940. Most of the words in that paragraph would be gibberish even to the most advanced scientists of that time. This is how much we have learned about biology in the last 79 years.
It is impossible to communicate the intensity of how little was known about biology in 1940, and how far biology has come in uncovering the molecular basis of life today. Cutting-edge biology in 1940 consisted of injecting mice with heat-treated viruses, and watching how they react. X-ray crystallography was too rudimentary at the time to go further. In 1949, with the discovery of the DNA double helix, the discipline called Molecular Biochemistry was born.
Throughout the decades of discovery of these bio-chemical pathways, at no point was there found a life force. No pervasive vital essence was seen operating on any of our cells or on the constituent molecules of our cells. The energy that the human body uses is fundamentally the same kinds of energy that are found everywhere else in non-living matter and indeed the same kind of energy used everywhere in the universe. Energy is energy. There is no special "type" of biological energy. It is for these reasons listed here, that atheists, secular humanists and other naturalists believe that we are "just molecules banging around".
It is because the evidence shows it, not because of an "ideology". It is because the evidence shows it, not due to an interpretation by a "worldview". To respond to the street preacher, we are molecules banging around. The claim is entirely fact-based.
Denial of the facts of biology can emerge from ignorance either accidental of self-imposed , particularly ignorance of what is actually possible by means of the physics of molecules and atoms.

21st Century Science

Where now? Ancient philosophies and religions supposed that life exists and persists because inanimate matter is animated by a soul. Abiogenesis has not been observed in nature, and although we have dozens of informed hypotheses about how abiogenesis occurred, we do not have a scientific theory of it. Evangelicals and creationists are seduced by the gaps in our knowledge, to insert intelligent design into those gaps in an attempt to dovetail design with their religious doctrine. Design is unlikely to have occurred. Any theory of supernatural intervention in early DNA is practically speaking, incongruent with the way in which extant bacteria species in our current oceans interact with marine bacteriophages there. Any theory based on the supernatural design of DNA would not even make sense in describing how bacteria interact with viruses.
If there were some kind of Supreme Being that created the universe, then that Being made us to be molecules banging around. That is just a fact that will have to be dealt with one way or another. There is a right way and a wrong way to respond to this news. To clutch one's bible, run back into the hills yelling "The soul substance animates the dust!" is not it. Nor should one fall into a pit of atheistic despair, as inmendham has done.
That life is "molecules banging around" is the state-of-affairs that we find ourselves in. The right way to proceed here to embrace the situation with maturity like grown adults. Notice that our species entered the 20th century still cutting wheat by hand with scythes. By 2000, boxes of food in our kitchens had nutritional breakdowns showing the amount of riboflavin content. (I ask the reader : what even is riboflavin?) Shift typewriters and telegraph were in place by 1900. The countryside was largely without electricity. By 2000, we had programmable computers connected by the internet. Our species had discovered how to program information.
The task of 21st century science is to program matter, as an analogy with how we have programmed information up until now. We know already that the information storage of programmable matter will either be DNA, PNA, or some other aperiodic peptide. If a supernatural soul or a vital spark is a required ingredient to make inanimate matter alive, then this project is doomed from the outset. If not required, then programmable matter has virtually no limit to its applications. Limits on such technology could occur only through human mistakes and miscalculations , for example unchecked war, solving our problems with violence, or mistakes involving the destruction of the earth's biosphere.

'''

It’s interesting that they clam life can start itself from random process as soon as the earth has cooled down yet they can’t do that in a lab?

Interesting or ignorant on your part. We have synthesized all of these reactions in a lab.
[link]¹ [link]²
Nucleosides, amino acids, independant metabolisms, etc., have all been produced in a lab. Lack of knowledge isn't evidence, do some research.

You proposed that cells could have used radiation instead of ATP as a primary energy source

No i didn't. I didn't say that at all. I said that radiation could have catalyzed the production of light sensitive reactions like the synthesis of amino acids and nucleosides, which again, we have observed in a lab. ATP, as you'll recall, I cited as a product of geothermal chemistry. The Nuclear geyser model combines these two conditions, so there was never a point when ATP was not present. The nuclear geyser model would have produce amino acids, nucleic acids, AND ATP, and other phosphorus based compounds associated with geological processes.
And as if you'd site Chernobyl you moron. I bet you think your rigged thought experiment proved something there.

DNA (and even more so RNA) is a fragile chain which breaks easily. If you do not have machinery to detect and correct errors the cell will die.

Prove it! This claim is based on a misconception. Mutation happens in cells. It how they evolve. And yes, most of them do die. That's how it works.

A “proto” cell having no walls will need something to stop chemicals touching it’s Dna information.

Again, did you read what I wrote? I covered this with my description of lipid micelles.

You propose these cells are in water, are you aware that these acid chains break down in water?

This statement is wrong.

Any starting life needs to be protected from water and protected from Oxygen.

Another wrong statement. Molecular oxygen was not present when life emerged. Also, RNA chemistry would have occurred within enclosed hydrothermal vents in the nuclear geyser model, so this is a moot point. But I have serious doubts that you'll understand what that means.

You claim that a ribosome would of “evolved”, please show how this happens. A ribosome is an advanced piece of machinery, we don’t see it appearing.

The ribosome likely emerged from a reactive RNA species called a ribozyme. And reconstructing ribosomal RNA demonstrates that all of the reactive sites on the ribosome are mediated by RNA reactions which each protein in the ribosomal complex assisting the ribosome but not directly performing work. This demonstrates that the ribosome, along with the discovery of actual ribozymes, did evolve from ribozymes. It is a chicken and the egg situation though, since you need ribosomes to synthesize proteins to make more ribosomes, but rybozymes assemble themselves after being translated from DNA, no ribosome necessary, solving your chicken and the egg question. In fact, thats the exact analogy that was used when this discovery was published.

You jump straight to a working machinery, I can’t let you make such fanciful leaps of imagination, you will need to show that ribosomes can self form without any intelligence involved

Rybozymes can, and we've already observe the evolution and selection of RNA species in a lab. As for the rest of the proteome, all proteins are descended from 31 identifiable protein fold superfamilies. Functions evolve do to random mutations are are selected based on the survival of the cell. From the ribozyme and ribosome, gene duplications and random mutation, its pretty easy to piece together how complex functions emerge.
And btw, tRNA being a reactive RNA species and not a protein adds further credibility to the claim that ribosomes and proteins evolved after RNA. They asseble themselves and rely mostly on hydrophobic and hydrophillic forces.

You have tried to imagine an environment that hot boots the cell for power, but you haven't explained how the information of the RNA got there.

The RNA or the information? The RNA has multiple sources. Meteorites, stellar nebula, nuclear geyser model. But as soon as you have self assembling molecules, even molecules as simple as DNA with only 4 base pairs, you have evolution. The ones that survive pass on their genes, the ones that don't don't. And some morphologies are superior to others, and entropy does the rest.

Feel free to show RNA replicating in lipid environment

If you remembered high school biology, you'd know that lipids are hydrophobic and form into micelles when exposed to water, like oil does. That means that oil and water don't mix, they separate. RNA replication can easily occur unhindered in the water dominated regions of the admixture. Every cell observed is an example of this. Even oil in a puddle is an example of this.

First, you don’t find that interesting that XY genes are immune to this duplication? There must be reason.

Actually there is a reason for this. The x and y chromosomes are purely hormonal. They don't contain any protein encoding genes. How do you know about gene duplication if you don't know about protein encoding genes? Lemme guess, you read it on a website, you didn't understand it, but it supported you're cherry picked views and now you support it? What a laugh

Oord Cloud, doesn’t exist, it’s is not observed. The only reason people think it is there is to explain why we see comets because comets only last for max 10,000 yrs.

Are you kidding me? We have dozens of observations of oort cloud objects. Why do you think pluto was demoted? The oort cloud includes kuiper belt objects, but there's also a notable kuiper belt cliff at the end of the kuiper belt and before the oort cloud that could be evidence for planet nine. We wouldn't know these things without evidence. And please don't tell me that you're using cherry picked science on comets to prove that the earth isn't older than 10,000 years. How misguided could you possibly be? All comets, asteroids, and meteors are left over materials that weren't cleared by larger bodies or the sun. Everything that's up there has been in orbit, either stable or unstable, since the solar system first formed 4.6 billion years ago.
And regarding nebular theory, that video is fake. Protoplanetary disk theory accurately predicts the distribution of materials in our solar system, the prevalence of silicon on earth, and even the distances of the planets form the sun. You couldn't be more blatantly wrong. Your angular momentum claim is silly. Planet orbit around a star, thats why they have more angular momentum. Also, they're less massive.

A Gas cloud by itself will never reach the Jeans limit as when the gas is compressed, it heats up and equalises.

Gas has mass. It most certainly collapses at high enough densities in space. And stop quoting science you don't know. These are not reasons to discount nebular theory.

How Earth is believed to be 4.55Gyr? Do you believe in radiometric dating? E.g. Uranium Lead, potassium argon, C14 etc… ?

I don't believe, I know. I have knowledge of quantum chromodynamics and I've personally performs particle decay equations based on radioisotope number. And the simple fact that quantum electrodynamics (not to be confused with quantum chromodynamics) predicts the electromagnetic behavior of every atom after hydrogen makes it one of the most if not the most successful theory every proposed. These decay rates can be expressed in simple terms that are repeatedly confirmed. And yes I can explain to you how radioisotope dating works. You know there are radioisotopes with their own half lives for every element, right?

You can have many theories about the pass, and if you can repeat your chemical theories in practice, and make life, you can call your theories scientific, but if you can't observe your chemicals doing it, then you should admit to yourself these theories are not scientific.

Based on this I guess I can call my views scientific. Thanks for the vote of confidence, but all you've done is demonstrate that you don't know a think about chemistry.
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A shorter version (reduced by 92.0%) can be found on IndiaSpeaks.
This is an extended summary, original article can be found here

Extended Summary:

Some biological analogies for certain sociopolitical issues.
However, due to emotionalism and other factors, as discussed in this fictional account, they do not grasp the matter for some reason..
They are particularlyuseful because the adverse edge of natural selection is most unforgiving there is no place for fancies and only what works finally makes it past the hatchet..
Likewise, the role of chance and absence of constraints are also placed in proper perspective.
The core functions pertain to the essence of life.
2) Transcription of the genetic nucleic acid into RNA for templating proteins or for action by itself.
The translation system is what is universal conserved across the three domains of life.
they have been inherited from parent to offspring for billions of years from the last universal common ancestor.
exchange of the genes coding for these components between distantly related organisms.
After the translation system the transcription system is the next highly conserved in the form of the RNA polymerase subunits.
Even more tellingly the strongest constraints being on translation and then transcription indicates that in an organism the language and apparatus for communicating and interpreting the genetic information tolerates even lesser diversity than the apparatus for copying the genetic information for inter-generational transmission.
Despite of all of this the bottom-line is that the common language of translation remains in place and all attacks against it are countered by increasing fidelity in face of attacks rather than just evolving away from the attack by diverging.
They have individually degenerated to such an extent that neither of them encodes a complete set of ribosomal proteins or tRNA synthetases.
Likewise eukaryotic organisms like us have evolved only because of this common language in the core systems the eukaryote is a symbiont of an alphaproteobacterium and an asgardarchaeon.
The mRNAs of bacterial origin can be translated in the archaeal-derived translation system for use in the bacterial endosymbiont (the mitochondrion).
First, we notice that even today there is some surviving diversity in the types of distinct RNA polymerases catalyzing transcription and the DNA polymerases catalyzing replication but we see only one ancient translation system that can produce genuine proteins.
Thus, the common language helps the group resources to come together more effectively.
These, in stark contrast to the core components show enormous diversity between organisms, often even between closely related ones.
This is easy to understand: being able to use different kinds of energy production mechanism or metabolite biosynthetic mechanisms help exploit different kinds of niches.
Thus, these systems are constantly under selection for diversification.
Thus, in conclusion there are some systems where there is a strong selection for conservatism and preservation of a common language and sense while in others there is simultaneous selection for diversification all explainable by the same process of natural selection i.
survival of the fittest.
Prior to the coming of the Indo-Aryans, there was probably already some degree of unity established by the neolithic and early metal age agricultural cultures.
kustumburu, karkai, kulla, knaa etc).
Certain mobile groups played a over-sized role in this unification but the more sedentary groups played along rather than oppose them.
All this was fine as long as India remained heathen.
This had a negative effect on the unity of the Hindu system.
In the end when the English departed and we had partial restoration of Hindudom under a secular state we were left with the main unifying undergirding in the form of the Hindu religion and Sanskrit language in shambles.
Thus, today we are faced with a scenario where a major component of Indias masses have their local languages rather than nationalism or national issues as the biggest animating factor! Indeed it is rather palpable that it forms the core of their identity much more than the Hindu religion or the Indian nation you commonly see a man typically call himself first a Tamil or Marathi or something like that rather than a Hindu.
Some of my interlocutors have objected that local languages have stymied the progress of Abrahamism because they preserved local non-Abrahamistic cultural elements.
Hence, we posit we that when confronted with large groups unified by their urge to place heathens like us in the grave or the museum there is not much to be gained from the local linguistic diversity and an identity based on it.
This unified super-group of Hindus would have much greater chance of survival against the Abrahamisms and be able to better command the resources of India and abroad.
That common language with a common script for it would be like the translation and transcription apparatus.
The religion might be compared to the replication apparatus it allows greater diversity than the translation or transcription apparatus but is still mostly part of the conserved core.
However, since something as simple as this is not easily understood by people, it is clear that, like with many other issues, the going is not going to be smooth for our people and that is putting it mildly..

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This is sort of hard to explain, so please bear with me. I'm 40 years old, and I want to go to grad school in a genetics-related field. From what I know of genetics, I really like it, but due to some bad experiences in the past, I have a sort of mental "wound" when it comes to getting a grasp on some of the concepts. Because of my ADD, when I'm confronted by a problem that I can't immediately grasp, I feel really stupid, and the shame associated with that feeling creates a sort of mental "block" that confuses the situation so badly that I have an extremely difficult time engaging with the material. Having said that, I'm looking for an analogy through which to engage with the material. The best one I can think of at this point is that of cooking/baking/recipe, i.e. a recipe is the instructions for an organism. How can I expand this analogy to explain things like alleles, genetic drift, and homozygosity, among others? Something that seems to help me is accurate visual representations of the processes and the various "things" that do the work, i.e. watching a CGI animation of a ribosome.

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Questions	Answers
What got you interested in the field of poop?	Well, it was a fairly indirect route. I was working as a postdoc with Mike Yarus on RNA sequence/structure/function relationships (essentially, how many random RNA molecules do you have to look at to find one that does something interesting?) When I looked in the public sequence databases for real functional RNAs to look at, the RNA that there was a lot of was the 16S ribosomal RNA. As Norm Pace was the local expert on that, I started attending his lab meetings (with his permission). What was fascinating to me is that they were using the 16S rRNA not primarily as a molecule of interest for its own structure, but rather as a tool to read out microbial communities. A few years later, when Ruth Ley (then one of Norm's postdocs, now at Cornell) moved to Jeff Gordon's lab at Wash U, Jeff gave her thousands of 16S rRNA sequences to analyze (a vast dataset then, but a rounding error now, which gives you an idea of how fast the field has progressed). Ruth remembered that I was interested in that sort of thing and suggested that we collaborate on what turned out to be the first application of UniFrac, the technique that Cathy Lozupone and I were developing for comparing microbial communities. This should give you an idea of how indirect and how collaborative a lot of science is -- very different from the perception people often have of a lone scientist making a discovery completely independently!
I've heard that probiotics have to be taken repeatedly to have any effect, as they can't colonize the gut due to their lack of numbers. So why is it that a single "fecal transplant" seems capable of having tremendous benefit for people with conditions like IBS?	Link to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
	Link to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
	But given the regulatory burden of obtaining an IND (Investigational New Drug application, from the FDA), it is likely that this research will happen outside the US.
	There are several reasons why fecal transplants could be different from probiotics in their ability to establish. First, the doses of bacteria in fecal transplant tend to be much higher. Second, most commercial probiotics are microbes that come from food, whereas fecal transplants are all bacteria that came out of the gut, so success rates for establishing are likely much higher. Third, fecal transplants also carry along a lot of the metabolites in the stool, which may help establishment. Research to untangle these different factors is just beginning.
	However, although we don't understand fully why fecal transplants are so effective, it's an empirical fact that they are (at least for C. diff, which kills 14,000 people a year in the US alone), with success rates typically in the 90-95% range.
Where do you see the greatest impact might be in the future for microbiome research? Will there be a disease or condition we could manage by manipulating the microbiota, and if so, how might that be achieved?	As far as reproducibility goes, we're engaged in a project called MBQC (MicroBiome Quality Control -- Link to www.mbqc.or ) to test cross-lab variability. Among the labs that participated, the preliminary results suggest that the reproducibility isn't as bad as you might have expected. This is the great advantage of using open protocols. Essentially, all bets are off when companies or labs use proprietary protocols where the differences might or might not make a difference, but no-one really knows. Whether the technical effects are a problem for interpretation depends a lot on how big the biological effect you're looking at is. Cathy Lozupone, who was the lead developer on UniFrac when she was a grad student with me, led a really elegant paper on what you can and can't do combining studies with different protocols last year: Link to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov . Essentially, if you're looking at a large effect, like age or some kinds of IBD, you'll find it no matter what, but if you're looking at something subtle the differences in techniques matter more. And you're correct that the computational techniques can have an even greater effect than the lab techniques on what you believe is in your sample -- again, why open source and open, reproducible protocols are important -- but consistency among the taxonomy databases and other resources has, through concerted effort, been getting much better in recent years.
Additionally, how do we deal with the current problem of reproducibility - different studies and different analyzes lead to different results (and often due to insufficient/inappropriate statistical approaches).	The question on impact has been answered elsewhere in this discussion.
What benefits can we obtain by studying the human microbiome more closely?	Over the past decade, the cost of DNA sequencing has dropped by orders of magnitude, which has allowed much better characterization of the microbiome of each person and allowed a lot more people to be studied. What we've found so far is that microbes are associated with all sorts of diseases and processes that no-one knew they were involved in -- obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, colon cancer, heart disease, and in mouse models even analogs of multiple sclerosis, autism and depression (there is some encouraging but preliminary human evidence for these last three as well). Additionally, we know much more now about how microbes metabolize the food we eat and the drugs we take, leading to large individual differences in how we respond to the same food or drug. Where the field is going next is moving beyond understanding who lives in a particular person's gut (in terms of which species live there) but the genes they have and the functions they perform. This is what will help us move beyond describing the microbes associated with a particular disease and towards understanding how to change them.
What do you recommend for the average person to improve our digestive health/bowel movements?	Well, a lot of the evidence pre-dates studies of microbiome involvement but studies of the microbiome help us understand why things work. For example, there's a lot of evidence that fiber is good -- in part this is because bacteria ferment it into butyrate in the large intestine, and then the butyrate helps feed the cells that line the gut. Special considerations apply if you have specific conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (and then it depends which subtype). One of the main things we're learning about the microbiome is that everyone is different, so it may be that the right advice on diet depends a lot on the individual (and that individual's microbes). But the general guidelines that are supported by evidence are things you'd expect: lots of leafy green vegetables, lots of brightly colored vegetables (these contain carotenoids, anthocyanins, lycopenoids, and other beneficial plant compounds), fermented foods, no fries or artificial sweeteners, or highly processed foods, etc.
Does beer count as a fermented food?	Yes but it's also high in sugars, which tend to have a less good effect.
How do artificial sweeteners affect the microbiome? Please use as much jargon as is necessary in your answer. I'm not afraid to google.	Later this week (looks like it is not online yet), you'll want to google essentially the question you're asking.
I assume you're referring to a paper that will be published without a paywall. Do you have a title?	Sorry, I shouldn't have said anything, but searching for microbiome and artificial sweeteners later this week should pull it up.
What are your thoughts on fecal transplants for treating all manner of diseases from crohn's and IBS to cancer? Also, what goes into selecting donors for fecal transplants (i.e. what constitutes a healthy persons gut biome)?	Thanks! There's a lot of promise in fecal transplants although as noted elsewhere, the FDA guidelines make it hard to do research on this in the US. Donors are usually selected as family members (relatives or spouses), although there is no evidence that this helps as far as I know -- it just makes the transplant more culturally acceptable. A very good reason not to use relatives or spouses is that they might actually harbor microbes that are harmful to the person who has the disease but are harmless in the context of their own microbiomes and genetics. On the other hand, family members, whether related or just living together, tend to have more similar microbiomes, see for example the papers below, so that decreases the risk of introducing problematic microbes. The AGA has some material on fecal transplant here (disclosure: I am on their Microbiome Center Science Advisory Board)
Thanks for your time! I have three questions. Genetic conditions like celiacs must have an effect on your microbes. Is there anything you could teach me about different genetic conditions and their effect on microbes inside human body?	The more general question about whether host genes affect the microbiome has been fairly extensively studied in mice and plants but the interesting information for humans I've seen presented at conferences is mostly unpublished unfortunately.
People of different ethnicities have different genetic makeup, implying there's a difference in their enzyme and other protein composition. Do people of different ethnic backgrounds have different microbial makeup as a result?	Yes, see here: Link to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov However, we don't yet know which differences are due to genetics, which to diet, which to environmental exposure, etc. as all these factors differ among populations.
What's this with fecal transplants? Could it help obesity and/or depression some day? Im a mental health therapist and those things can be hard to treat.	See other answers on gut-brain axis and fecal transplants. Briefly, there's great evidence in mice that you can alter behavior by altering the microbiome, e.g. Link to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
	Whether this can also be done in humans is an active area of investigation (complicated by IND requirements) but potentially very promising. You're exactly right that mental illness has been very challenging to treat, and NIMH is actively looking for new treatment modalities. However, NIMH is currently avoiding observational research and focusing on research that establishes links to specific neural circuits. Although you can certainly see their point (observational studies that lack mechanistic underpinnings have had limited success over the last few decades), it also raises the bar for studies that are trying to look for completely new mechanisms.

Last updated: 2014-09-21 17:39 UTC
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Date: 2014-04-08
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Questions	Answers
What is the name of your company? Can I buy stock yet?	Believe it or not we just incorporated this year, prior to that we were just a partnership. I'm afraid an IPO is some time off. The verification leads to a blog post on our site, feel free to check it out if you want.
Have you ever read Prey by Michael Crichton? What did you think? Are we there yet?	Its actually sitting on my bookshelf but I have yet to read it. I was a big fan of William Gibson back in the day and a lot of his concepts have already come to reality or are close to.
	These days my mind is pretty swamped with nano-tech day in and day out so for my personal time I mostly read zombie stuff.
Have you looked at using on human skin? As a protective layer and for waterproofing (for diving etc)	Even the water based formulas which are generally safe for contact with human skin still create results that would get in the way of things your skin is naturally supposed to do. For example, the formulas are both hydrophobic (water) and oleophobic (oil). Your skin needs both of those things to stay healthy. There’s also the fact that you need an oxidizer to remove the coating and its not a good idea to scrub yourself down with Hydrogen peroxide.
What are some of the applications to watercraft propulsion systems?	We haven’t yet developed a formula that can be used as an additive to fuels (some companies have). That said the nano-coatings will reduce (if not do away with entirely) buildup of any kind. They essentially create a super slick surface as well as being hydrophobic, which prevents friction or the microscopic texture needed for mold, algae, or even dirt to adhere.
Do you think safety testing and regulations are sufficient for nano-products? The density of functional groups and little knowledge about breakdown pathways add some extra possible paths to toxicity.	To be completely honest… on a common logic level, yes, but realistically there hasn’t been nearly as much testing and regulation as I would like to see.
Is this a University spin-out? Where was the IP developed?	Many of these technologies get away with saying its existing technology and materials just on a smaller scale so should be fine, but the father with kids in me says that scares the crap out of me.
I am super interested in these materials for aquatic application. There are huge applications in marine industries. But I am specifically interested in aquaria. Something non-toxic that can line tanks and pipes in aquaculture systems and prevent biofilm build up would change my business.	Going into this I decided I didn’t want it to be a plug for our technologies, so I won’t go into those specific details, but I can tell you that the water based formulas are. These types of formulas are based on a range of nano-polymers, the majority of them are non-toxic such as ours, but the nano-polymers require a delivery method and that’s where you get into the toxic components. Some of our formulas are solvent based. That solvent base is mildly toxic in the sense that it is rated as an irritant and minor hazard to water pollution should it be put in the water on a mass scale. Even that though, once the formula dries and the solvent dissipates the nano-polymers are entirely non-toxic. Point is when looking for these types of technologies look at the delivery method. Water based is obviously 100% safe.
I've never seen anything that was fish and algae safe though. Is there anything on the horizon that could meet my needs?
Since you aren't plugging here (thanks) is there a way to get in touch with y'all if one was interested in testing this?	Yeah my e-mail and everything is on the contact page. I'm Clayton.
What kind of backgrounds did you and your partner have prior to founding the company? What made you choose this particular niche to work in?	My partner, the chemist has his background primarily in chemistry but obviously a lot of other sciences.
	I have a background in medicine. Not really anything to do with nanotechnology, but it helped me to understand the science a bit better. I guess you could say a similar mindset.
I'm currently in High School with a 3.6 GPA, I know this isn't really that good, but what should one major in college to get into this field?	I'll be posting an answer from my partner later on how he got started in the science end of this. He'll be able to answer that much better.
How did you get into this field as a medic? (Coming from a fellow medic!)	Medicine was never really for me. Half my family is doctors and surgeons so I just followed suit. After school I kind of drifted a bit. Ended up working some government jobs then met my partner and it seemed perfect. Really just random chain of events.
If nanobots were to run amok, what would be your method for trying to stop them?	EMP, at least until they adapt, then we're screwed.
Will we ever see nanotechnology like it is romanticized in Science Fiction?	The curve scientific evolution is progressing at I wouldn't be surprised if we see the capability in the next 50-100 years, but then there’s the question of if we should or not. Whether or not the answer is yes, you’ll always have groups that will say no for fear of the unknown and these types of groups have been an obstacle for progress throughout history, so could be a problem.
What are some everyday applications of your companys product that we may see eventually? It sounds really interesting. Thanks for doing an AMA.	Not even eventually, the formulas are ready now. Every day uses range from protecting your carpet or sofa from stains to keeping your car clean perpetually with little to no cleaning.
	On a more professional level these formulas are used in a lot of medical environments where bodily fluids are a problem.
Are there any big downsides? Cost, or perhaps disposal?	Cost is a big one, maybe not as big as you might think, but overall the formulas are expansive and our profit margins are low.
	We still need to obtain the nano-polymers from organizations that have the capability to cut them but not use them. These organizations are quite small so once we have the ability to expand and do that ourselves or to further develop our partners' businesses the cost will decrease.
Do you prefer cats or dogs? On a note serious note, how will your product differ compared to some other companies super hydrophobic sprays?	We try to break it down into 4 categories.
	Results.
	Toxicity levels.
	Ease of application.
	And of course cost.
	There are only a handful of companies developing formulas with similar results, even less that achieve the results while keeping toxicity levels down. Some are more potent than ours but require a three stage application process. Some are less potent but cost considerably less.
	In the end it comes down to what you’re looking for.
	EDIT: Have the best cat ever named Achilles, but grew up around dogs. Love them both.
Do you think nanomachines can or will ever be used the way Kojima uses it in Metal Gear Solid?	Anything that can be will be weaponized by man. That’s about as sure as death and taxes, so yeah.
Aside from the technology/science itself, what were some of the challenges in breaking into the field as a new business?	There is a serious lack of understanding about the formulas, which is to be expected, but matters are made worse when you have some companies out there that are being a bit unethical in their promises and have big advertising budgets.
	We don’t mind competing evenly with many of the good companies, in fact I have a lot of respect for them, but some of the others are hurting the industry in general and I find myself repairing their damage with every phone call.
How far do you see nanotechnology advancing in your lifetime?	I’ve said this since I was a teenager, but I honestly believe that everything from curing cancer to cosmetic surgery through nanotechnology will be accomplished in the next fifty or so years. I’m pushing 40 now so I hope to see it, or at least hope we make enough headway that I can push my life expectancy long enough to see it.
	Beyond that we’re going to see some major advancements in mining where nanotechnology can be used to siphon minerals in a much more friendly manner, advancements in green tech with nanotechnology allowing equipment and materials to last ten times longer and making green energy far more efficient, etc etc.
	In general the sky is the limit. Actually, strike that because the sky is a pretty low limit.
For us dummies, what exactly is nanotechnology and how are you using it to benefit mankind?	This is a tricky one because the international community as a whole hasn’t fully accepted the definitions yet. Basically it means using stuff that is really really small. In 2011 the IRMM defined real-world nanoparticle size as 20 nanometres (nm) but again that hasn’t been fully accepted.
	Our formulas fit that criteria so technically nanotech, but nanotech could be just about anything. When you see the sci-fi version of nano-scale robots that’s not nanotech any more so than our formulas with nano sized particles. Maybe a bit cooler though.
So... What steps are you taking to prevent a potential grey goo scenario?	That's pretty far from what we do. The nano-polymers we work with have no ability to do anything other than what they were made for. They can't replicate or even move.
Do you have any plans to work on nanotechnology that can be used in or on the human body?	No, that would pretty much fall under biotech, which isn't what we do.
How do you get the raw materials? Do you ship things in or out of your business?	We work with a number of partners that manufacture the nano-particles. Most of these partners do not have the capability of turning the particles into anything useful. As an analogy it’s kind of like a tire manufacturer selling tires to the car company. We can’t build without them and vice versa.
	We ship both directions, raw materials in and formulas out, both on a commercial level and large scale B2B.
Hey, I want to get into nano tech? Let me go and find a mad scientist to do the work for me!"?	That’s actually not too far off, even the mad scientist part. I repeatedly refer to him as Heisenberg. The catalyst was money and potential. On a personal side I’ve always been fascinated with future technologies, even if they aren’t so future anymore, so there was a personal draw as well.
What other types of applications will these hydrophobic formulas have other than using them on electronics?	The electronics aspect is widely misunderstood so I’ll give that a bit of explanation first.
	You’ve probably seen companies like Liquipel that offer to make iPhones, tablets, etc waterproof. They can and they do, but the process isn’t quite as simple as they describe. To coat electronics the item needs to be in a vacuum sealed chamber and the nano-coating has to be capable of being atomized and applied inside that chamber.
	We ourselves are developing a partnership with a smart watch company, but in this case it’s because they can apply the formula prior to assembly, and so no need for vacuum chambers etc.
	Beyond electronics we can make anything from a T-shirt to a cement floor super-hydrophobic. We even have a pro-mountain biker who uses it, the idea being that if mud and water can’t stick to you then you’re the guy finishing the race 50lbs lighter than everybody else.
Are nanobots ever going to happen? If so, how far off are we?	Quick answer because the long answer is on another similar question.
	Yes, and probably in the next 50-100 years.
This is so cool. I feel like we are on the verge of ushering in a new era. Almost of evolution even, though it's not necessarily on a biological level. Thanks for replying!	I agree completely.
What is a common irrational fear when it comes to nanotechnology? Do you have any yourself?	In general there is a disconnect in people’s understanding of what nanotechnology really is. It’s not all little robots and genetically manipulated materials. Nanotechnology really just refers to size.
Also what is your favourite science fiction book or movie?	EDIT: Forgot the book part, not your usual science fiction but I'm a big fan of 'The Difference Engine' by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. After that the usual Ender's Game, the culture novels by Ian Banks, etc
I appreciate that, looking forward to it. Also, any chances you'll be hiring in 2015? Wink wink nudge nudge?	You never know. Keep in touch.
I think about studying Microsystems and nanotechnology. Any advices for me and/or impressions you had during study time? How did you like your time at university? Do you think this kind of science has its future?	I think it has a very promising future. In fact it’s already well positioned to replace many of the technologies of the past. As for university, unless you want to be a medical doctor I can’t tell you much because that’s what I went to school for. At Nanex I work on the development of the company. It’s my partner that does all of the science stuff.
Would you consider it a small field, with potential for exponential (and life-consuming) growth?	Almost exactly, but I might have said "life changing" as opposed to "life consuming". There are only about 10 – 20 companies doing super hydrophobic or nano-coatings right now and none of them with more than 10 employees.
	With regards to growth there are some pretty devastating blows coming for the technologies of the past such as Teflon and etc. PFOA and PFOS, both known as C8 technologies are about to become illegal throughout the EU. These are the same technologies used in most non-stick treatments and many water proofing solutions.
	Moves like that are definitely going to be a game changer for companies like ours.
	I got the joke, just decided to answer seriously
What is the best way to get involved in this field?	Depends if you’re talking on the development side or the business side. Both are pretty straight forward. Development means a lot of university and probably getting in on an internship with a lab somewhere. I’ll be posting more on this once I get a statement from my partner the chemist.
	As for the business side, my side of things, it’s definitely good to have a science background. Mine is in medicine and it definitely helped me to understand the technologies just being scientifically oriented. Beyond that it’s not unlike any other business segment.
How did you get funding?	We didn’t. We weren’t exactly rich but we had fairly good incomes and reasonable savings. We poured pretty much all of it into the company and we were able to fund ourselves. We started with one formula and started selling. The revenues from that paid for the rest of the company.
	Today we’re completely debt and investment free, and very glad for the struggle. As an entrepreneur I would suggest seriously considering if it’s possible to go it on your own. There’s nothing like having full control and full ownership.
Do you feel that you have limited the business at all be growing organically?	A portion of our business model now is to work through distributors, so what this means is having other companies sign up to sell the products. They do this by becoming Always Dry Chile for example (Always Dry is one of the brands). They get exclusivity for all of that country and we in return get an infusion of cash without handing out portions of the company, just regions, and even for those regions we will continue to profit as the distributor grows.
In your professional opinion, how long would you estimate before all matter in the universe is transformed into a seething gray mass of nanomachines?	Well I’m glad you said “transformed” because it means you get that the materials nano or otherwise have to come from something. I honestly don’t think it would ever happen though, or at least I don’t think it’s more plausible than a catastrophic gravitational wave or supernova at just the wrong place and time.
I understand that nanotechonology =/= nanomachines, but this is an important question, dammit!	Completely talking out my ass there. I don’t know anything about astrophysics but they both sound reasonable.
What about safety and toxicity? Nano-sized particles can get really deep in the lung when inhaled...	Definitely a consideration. We use two types of particles, both are naturally occurring minerals, one is an irritant so you could expect some discomfort if you inhaled it but we only use that on our industrial formulas and once its dry it’s not coming off and certainly not going airborne. The other is completely non-harmful.
What is the scariest public health disaster you think could realistically result from misapplication of nanotechnology?	The kind we do, pretty much nothing, but I also just answered a question on molecular nanotechnology. Now that’s some scary shit. Let’s say in the process of building a creature based on mechanosynthesis some wise guy gets the bright idea to program it to learn and adapt, we are then dealing in a world we know so little about from perspective. Who knows what lessons the machines might learn and how they might adapt to them.
	We couldn’t even effectively gate them with the Asimovian three laws of robotics. Sure we could tell them not to harm humans, but these things would live on such a scale that a human would be a pretty remote concept no matter how in depth the initial programming is and we’re bound to miss something, some chain of events that would not end well.
I still think Drexler when I hear "nanotechnology". In your opinion, how far away are we from the first Drexler-style nano assembler?	Ah, Molecular nanotechnology, one of my favourite future sciences. The other is living ships, biological organisms bred to live in outer space for the purpose of transportation.
	Anyhow… the molecular assembler! Vey far unfortunately. It’s not that the nanotechnology aspect can’t be achieved but what we’re really looking at is a hybrid of not just genetic manipulation, but genetic creation and nanotechnology. That’s if we’re talking about a true molecular assembler. Other technologies along the same lines such as the ribosome-like molecular assemblers or mechanized mechanosynthesis may be much closer.
Are there nanomachines used in hospitals?	Nanomachines I'm not sure, but I doubt it. There's probably a few types of functional nano-scale devices that are used, or at least I imagine there are. I can tell you though that a number of hospitals use super-hydrophobics on uniforms, gloves, bedding, etc.
I am a 17-year old student in Ontario and I hope to go to the University of Waterloo this coming fall for Nanotechnology Engineering. Do you believe this field has a lot of job opportunities in the near future?	Absolutely, but more than that you're getting in on the ground floor. In the not too distant future you're going to be seeing a lot of Fortune 500s looking toward this type of technology. Make a name for yourself now before that happens.
Can I volunteer my body for nanotech research or do you mainly work on things that don't breathe?	We're not biotech, so yeah mostly coatings for inorganic material, but I'm sure there are a lot of companies and universities that would love to take you up on that.
The first thing I'd like to see is fog proof glass, particularly on the inside of my car's windshield. Please say this is coming soon!	You won't have to wait long. We've got a couple of new developments coming and that's one of them. You'll see it by New Years.
What are your thoughts of the technology in "ghost in the shell".	Never really got into Ghost in the Shell, so don't know much about it.
I am a business student, getting my CPA. I want to get involved in technology companies, specially nano science/engineering. How did you get your start in them and any advice for me. Thank you.	Getting into this field from a business side of things isn’t unlike any other business. We still need operations managers, business development, accounting, etc. Other than accounting its probably a good idea to have some sort of knowledge of sciences otherwise you will find the learning curve pretty steep, but that’s about it.
	At this period in time the industry probably has a lot more in common with internet or tech startups than it does with sciences related type business. There’s a handful of small companies, mostly all with promising technologies, but almost all underfunded and fighting to get known.
	My suggestion would be to start looking around at who’s out there and see if you work your way into apart time internship or low level position before you graduate.
Something something, every AMA is an endorsement, something something.	Sorry if you’d seen it that way. I had meant to go out of my way not to push the products and in fact I’ve mentioned a few competitors in a positive light. I’m here to offer some insight into a field that Reddit has been fairly interested in and that’s it.

Last updated: 2014-04-13 00:17 UTC
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